Big Government

Murderers of the Middle Class

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I was reading about an aspect of the composite New York girlfriend which our current President incorporated in that gracefully luminescent autobiography which apparently very few people read, when I was reminded yet again of how much I despise Bill Ayers. Yep, that Bill Ayers, wanna-be terrorist, influential educationist, neighbor and apparently BFF with said president. My daughter has a word (or several, actually) for people like him, of which the mildest is ‘hipster douchbag.’ It seems that some of the elements of the composite girlfriend have something in common with the girlfriend of Bill Ayers in his bomb-throwing days … the one whose skills at bomb-making were shall we say somewhat less than skilled?

Diana Oughton like Mr. Ayers and some of his other confreres came from an embarrassingly well-to-do family. They pleased and amused themselves four decades ago by messing around with violent revolution, bank robbery and the inexpert assembly of high-explosive devices, presumably for the benefit of the working class, the poor, the proletariat, or whatever Marxist euphemism it pleased them to label the recipients of their beneficence. The bomb, which exploded prematurely in March of 1970 in a Greenwich Village townhouse, was made of roofing nails and dynamite stuffed into a length of water pipe; the intended target was a dance at the Fort Dix NCO club.

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“Sooner or later, your schtick will wear thin, in half empty halls.”

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This classic song by Nardwuar The Human Serviette & The Evaporators is dedicated to President Obama.

He began his re-election campaign today in a half empty stadium in Ohio.

Mr. Obama’s advance team really screwed the pooch on this one.

The story is not his speech, or his campaign, but the empty seats.

It is a long way to November. But this is not a good omen for Mr. Obama.

“Sooner or later, your dream will crash, in half empty halls.”


Quote of the Day

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Richard Epstein:

So what next? The best first step is to free up labor markets world wide. Specifically, we need policies that take aim at the unbearable political forces that seek to tighten the regulatory noose on voluntary labor markets.
 
Unfortunately, the dominant attitude of macroeconomists is to assume that nothing that takes place within the labor market (of which Krugman never speaks) is large enough to influence the large macro trends to which they attribute today’s high employment rates.
 
The blunt truth is exactly the opposite. The calcification of labor markets is the primary impediment to economic recovery. The direct effects of government regulation of labor can matter far more than the indirect effects of macroeconomic policy, whether Keynesian or austerity-based. Neither austerity nor lavish public expenditures will improve the overall situation, which is why the massive increase in American public debt has not nudged unemployment rates down. The only workable solution has to stress job creation, not by misdirected subsidies, but by dismantling the government obstacles to market exchange.

In Favor of Government Regulation

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In general, I am not in favor of government regulation of pretty much anything, since most of the time the rules don’t make sense or favor certain parties, and/or are written by people that don’t know what they are talking about. But I think what I saw Saturday night was an exception that I am willing to make. What you see below is our fight team head coach taping the hands of one of our fighters. As an aside, we had three fighters in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competition Saturday night and went 3-0, with two knockouts and one submission.

I have been backstage many times with the fighters, but there was never anyone watching or looking around. The woman dressed in the black is a state of Wisconsin inspector. She was making sure that the taping of the hands was legal.

There are rules now on how you can tape hands – the most important being that you can tape between the knuckles, but not over them. This disallows the “casting” of your hand, which effectively turns it into a club. The regulation tape is only 1″ wide.

After the hands were taped, the inspector signed the tape. Then the glove goes on over the taping, and that is taped as well – and the inspector watched me doing this and signed off on that too. After you are taped and signed, no fighter was allowed to leave the locker room area without having an inspector escort (typically to the restroom, or to the cage to inspect for footing and the flex of the fence).

In the old days, none of this happened. We just taped the hands, one of the guys running the fights would glance at it, and that was that. There were no locker room regulations, or anyone from any authority back there. The inspectors also checked everyone’s shorts and one guy had to cut some laces off that weren’t able to be tucked away.

The pre-fight meeting was better too. The referee clearly explained all the rules (there are many more than you think) to the fighters and the coaches and corners. The promoter of the fights also said that no taunting of the opponent would be tolerated, and that if you did taunt, you would never appear on the card again. And that went for coaches and seconds as well. Celebration, OK – but taunting, no way.

Security was also tighter. I had to show my “seconds” license from the State of Wisconsin to receive my passes to enter the locker room and to be cageside. By the way there is no test to be a second. Just fill out a form and send in $40.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I typically disdain the government getting into stuff like this, but every single person there from the State knew exactly what they were talking about, knew the rules, and were extremely professional and helpful. There were a lot of questions since this was the first time a lot of us had seen a state presence such as this and all were dealt with fairly.

The fighters have to go through a much more rigorous testing to get their license; blood work, doctors inspections and more.

MMA is huge and getting bigger every day. I think that a set, established, group of rules is a good thing for the sport, and will help keep idiots out of the ring and out of the way.

Paying Higher Taxes Can Be Very Profitable

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(I originally posted this in early 2010–today seems like an appropriate day for a re-post)

Chevy Chase, MD, is an affluent suburb of Washington DC. Median household income is over $200K, and a significant percentage of households have incomes that are much, much higher. Stores located in Chevy Chase include Tiffany & Co, Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Nieman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Saks-Jandel.

PowerLine observed that during the 2008 election season, yards in Chevy Chase were thick with Obama signs–and wonders how these people are now feeling about the prospect of sharp tax increases for people in their income brackets.

The PowerLine guys are very astute, but I think they’re missing a key point on this one. There are substantial groups of people who stand to benefit financially from the policies of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate, and these benefits can greatly outweigh the costs of any additional taxes that these policies require them to pay. Many of the residents of Chevy Chase–a very high percentage of whom get their income directly or indirectly from government activities–fall into this category.

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