Unless Washington acts soon to resolve these uncertainties, from the cap-and-trade folly to the health care monstrosity, most investors will likely remain largely on the sidelines, consuming some of what would have been invested and protecting the remainder of their wealth in cash hoards and low-risk, low-return, short-term investments.

Private investment lags almost 1/3rd behind 2006 levels. The largest “investment” happening is irrational politically driven government spending, which actually acts as a brake by causing fear and uncertainty. Throw in crazy debt levels, and unpredictable rises in taxes and labor costs and you squelch investment and recovery.

Things would be different if Congress lost their jobs on real economic metrics.

52 million tax returns in 2008 paid nothing. 50 million of those reported over $50K in income.

Doesn’t that seem wrong? Shouldn’t everybody pay something? And shouldn’t that something rise and fall with government spending?

Some, Commenter Carl for instance, rant on about how Christians want to control every move you make. They ignore Muslims that actually do want that level of control. And they ignore nanny statists that force you to separate your trash, drive slower than you should have to, and steal more than 1/2 your income.

I do not lose sleep at night over Christians. I know any group that large will have some kooks, but they are nowhere near power. But I know, right now, as I write, there are  hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of progressives and liberals plotting to use the force of government to make me do something they think I should do, or not do something they don’t want me to do. Or not eat what I want to eat.

The latest assault comes from Nanny Central, New York state, where a law has been introduced to ban the use of SALT in preparation of restaurant foods.

"No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises," the bill, A. 10129 , states in part.

No… I’m not worried about the “Christians”.  Their faith centers on free will.

I just wish our government still did.

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district. 

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

…

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

http://www.crimereports.com/map/index/?search=+St.%20George+UT

It looks like about 500 crimes happen every 7 to 10 days.

You may have figured out that I think many cities use traffic enforcement as a random tax on its citizenry.  If you disagree with that, you aren’t paying attention.

Folks in Knoxville, TN noticed that traffic enforcement has gone up with the city’s budget woes. In a blog posting about it I found this sage advice:

"Can citizens fight back?"
YES!: If EVERYONE who gets a ticket contests it in court, the judicial system simply can’t handle the volume. Right now, only a tiny fraction of citations are contested, even if that tiny fraction merely doubled (a small increase overall) the system would grind to a halt.
Always contest a ticket. (1) you take the chance that the officer won’t show and you win by default (2) You deny them any profit: because even if you go in and plead ‘no contest’ and ask for a reduced fine you eat the judges time, the officers time, the bailiffs time, the court recorders time, etc…
Fight the ticket = deny them the profit.

I agree. I haven’t had a ticket in 20 years, but if everybody fights back together we can beat this scourge.

My brother is a cop. I’m friends with a number of cops. Most claim “ah that traffic stuff is penty anty, I don’t do that”.  But I’m old enough that most that I know are high ranking or senior and have their pick of jobs – and they aren’t on patrol anymore. They don’t do it, but their departments almost certainly are.

St. George’s department used to post traffic stop statistics. But then I brought to their attention, and the local newspaper’s attention, that the statistics did not vary with population in our seasons… implying a quota system was in effect.

Now they don’t publish it anymore.

They just want the money – safety has little to nothing to do with it.

Virginia will pass a budget that is SMALLER than 2006 – actually shrinking its spending:

But many Republicans believe that the budget crisis offers the long-awaited opportunity to pare down spending in a state that has taken on too much.

"There’s no question this is scaling back," said Del. M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights). "I think some of it is structural and won’t come back."

Naturally the Washington Post and the Democrats whine that children will die:

Many Democrats believe that the state’s new spending priorities abandon its most vulnerable residents citizens, and will have an impact that could extend well beyond the current two-year budget cycle.

What they should have written was that “Democrats had unspoken fears about how many votes they would be able to buy in coming election cycles”.

I predict Virginia will do just fine and nobody will die. In fact, I suspect they could go to 2000 budget levels with nil effect on day to day life.

Good on you VA – Bob McConnell and Chris Christie might make a great 2012 ticket!

Or maybe Congress needs a Chief Exorcist as well?  The Devil certainly has an office suite there.

According to the NY Post the movie “Green Zone” slanders America and our troops.

"Green Zone" isn’t cinema. It’s slander. It will go down in history as one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio.

So I think I’ll skip it.

When will a Band of Brothers or Sands of Iwo Jima be made for this generation of heroes?

It sucks that Hollywood and our political class hate us so.

BTW: Is it an accident the last patriotic war movie Damon was in was during the Clinton Presidency?  They only love America if they are in charge of it.

I love my insurance company (Intermountain Healthcare). They’ve paid through the nose for me over the last two years. Other than a brief scuffle trying to get a rheumatologist, they been very supportive and helpful through two years of expensive health struggles. They have denied one procedure, recently, and… it turns out they were right.  The referred doctor found the problem was another part of my hip.

My wife mentioned yesterday that for all the Obama griping about “insurance companies” the actual insurance that rejects the highest number of claims is….

MEDICARE

They reject 6.85% of claims.  Aetna came in close – so I doubt many folks are “glad they met ya Aetna”. But I suspect that many of the rejections in the private insurance come in their Medicare gap insurance – or in other words the “no” originates from government rulings.

Now to the OBVIOUS here… when we are all under the government, who will we compare them too, who will we turn to when they decline us – which they will?

Lindsey Graham has an idea. So you know you are in trouble – right?

He and Chuck Schumer (another paragon of self-promoting idiocy) want to have a national ID card.   Like so many other politicians they want to ride concern over a valid problem – illegal immigration – to promote an idea they will use to squash freedom and dissent.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

Uhmmm. NO THANKS.

I do not want anything Lindsey Graham or Chuck Schumer think is grand.  A national ID would provide a basis for no privacy and internal movement controls. No thanks!

The ACLU, in one of the good things they do to hide their basic anarchist goal, doesn’t like it:

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

And neither do I.   Now an “Idiot Identification Card” might be handy. Schumer and Graham would be first in line for such an honor.

Brian waits for another shooter to take a shot.
Green Valley area of St. George
Oct 2001

Sportsman generally hate Obama. I’ve never met a serious shooter, fisherman, or ATV rider that didn’t tilt way right or libertarian.

Obama hates them right back and appears ready to give the greenies a big thank you by banning fishing in some waters:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

Never mind that Obama is supposed to be EVERYBODY’s President, not just be for those that donated to him.   No, he listens to the greenies and they want fishing stopped, because, as you know, eco-kooks lay awake at night worried that somebody somewhere is having fun outside.

Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."

This is not the only access issue threatening the public’s right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

I’m tired of fighting Obama and his minions and we are only a year into it.   I don’t know why they hate us, and America so, but they do, and I guess we will just have to suck up a little wind and continue to fight back.

What I’m really tired of is having a President I’m sure hates America. How the hell did that happen?