…but only because there are less people looking for jobs, says Charles Slat.
The good news is that there were 500 fewer people counted as unemployed during the month. The bad news is that there were 1,100 fewer in the work force, meaning that scads just stopped looking for jobs.
Is it just me, or does this seem a little silly? Monroe County Community College is offering residents a seminar to help them learn how to vote…well.
The college will present a 90-minute seminar called “Voting Like a Pro: The Layman’s Guide to Making an Informed Decision this November.” It will offer local residents a better understanding of the American democratic process and help residents become informed voters.
So, Laymen have to be educated by the experts before they can make “informed decisions” on elections?
It’s simple if you’ve already decided you’re a republican, or democrat: Just vote for your respected party’s candidates without researching them. If you tend to be more independent you have some work to do. You’ll need to figure out which candidate is the “lesser of two evils.” Which one will take less of your money, destroy the economy less, involve us in less foreign wars ( I think that’s good), and usurp to a lesser degree, our civil liberties? Then fully endorse this evil by voting for that candidate. No seminar required.
From Mike Tennant on the LRC blog:
Why Party Platforms Are Meaningless
Exhibit A, from the 2008 Republican Party platform:
“We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.”
The Obama campaign has raised record amounts of money, exceeding $600 million dollars, which has been and will be spent on television and radio commercials, transportation, events, lawyers, and a plethora of other things that will have no value after the election. To a lesser extent, McCain’s Campaign will be doing the same thing. So why is it, people feel the need to castigate Sarah Palin for her $150,000 campaign clothing budget? Sure, it’s ridiculous, but so is the entire presidential campaign process, and $150,000 is a drop in the bucket when compared to the total amount spent by the candidates.
They have this money, because people voluntarily give it to them to spend. Well, a lot of McCain’s money was taken by the use of force from taxpayers since he opted to receive government matching funds; but that’s a separate issue, and as I’ve said before, Obama would have done the same had he not seen the advantage of the other option.
The Frenchtown Township Board is having second thoughts after raising the salaries of four employees. This is on top of the 4% increase they’ll get next year.
I think the comments provide a fairly good representation of how Frenchtown Township residents feel about this. For instance:
“The worst recession (depression) in years, tens of thousands out of work, record setting home foreclosures. bank failures and Wall Street collapse. How wonderful that our elected officials can still vote themselves a generous wage increase.”
Alan Greenspan, before a House panel: “I have found a flaw[in the free-market]. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”
You mean our “free-market” with a progressive income tax, and a central bank (which you were chairman of); two planks of the Communist Manifesto?
Execution of the other 8 planks is well underway.
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
-Alan Greenspan (1966)
Proposal 1, on the ballot this November, would “allow for the medical use of marijuana under state law for patients with certain ‘debilitating medical conditions’ including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy, hepatitis C, and multiple sclerosis, among others.”
A yes vote on this proposal is a vote for health freedom and individual liberty in general. No one has the right to come between a doctor and their patient when making treatment decisions. Various studies reveal the effectiveness of medical marijuana as a treatment for the symptoms of many debilitating diseases. Evidence also clearly suggest that is it vastly safer than legally prescribed and FDA approved drugs that you rarely hear anyone complain about, until countless people have died. Whether or not marijuana is a safe and effective treatment should be up to an individual and their doctor, not the government.
The scare tactics against marijuana are mind boggling and unfounded. Alcohol is more dangerous, but regarded as an acceptable recreational drug by most Americans.
Furthermore, this proposal is a step in direction of freeing the doctor-patient relationship from the irrational grip of the government.
Here is a cartoon depiction of the government swindle, now euphemistically referred to as a “rescue package.”
I’m also reminded of a joke I once heard:
“What do you get when you cross a pit bull with a collie?
A dog that runs for help … after he bites your leg off.”
The only difference in the case of the bailout, is that the government isn’t really helping us despite any good intentions our representatives(I use the term loosely…perhaps incorrectly) may have.
Yes it IS, among other things, a bailout. By enabling the treasury to purchase illiquid assets from banks who issued mortgages to unqualified borrowers,* congress is preventing the natural correction of the inflated housing market. Those banks who would otherwise experience losses due to poor business practices, will have their bad debt taken off their books at the above market prices, at the expense of the taxpayers.
We may experience a limited span of false economic security, but the damage to the economy has already been done, and there is no amount of tinkering that will allow us to escape the inevitable adjustment. Real estate values remain higher than true market values, and we continue to consume at a much higher rate than we produce; with a significant percentage of the consumption financed by debt.
Inflation, will likely become a serious problem when banks begin to loosen credit, as their reserves are built up with newly issued currency from the Federal Reserve’s purchase of Treasury Bills. For now, I suppose we can enjoy the artificial “high” induced by the magic wand of socialism. We’ll worry about the side effects later.
* I am aware that the Community Reinvestment Act obligated many banks to lend to unqualified borrowers. That combined with the artificially low interest rates set by Greenspan and Bernanke, set into motion the mis-allocation of capital that led to the bubble. But this is not to say that many of these banks were not acting recklessly.
well, no one is laughing, but in this clip from December of 2006 there is only one man (Peter Schiff), who had enough foresight and understanding to correctly predict the economic trouble that was ahead. Listen to the others laugh and joke at what he had to say.
While everyone was preoccupied with talk of the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, the House passed a $25 billion bailout for the US auto industry. Our political leaders are sending a clear message: If your company is large enough, it doesn’t matter how disastrously it’s being run, we’ll take money — forcibly — from taxpayers to help you maintain your failing enterprise.
Collectivism — the idea that the rights of individuals should be sacrificed for the erroneous benefit of the common good — is destroying this country. We are quickly adopting Soviet-style central planning; and if things don’t change (and, no, I’m not talking about the change that Obama and McCain claim to offer) soon, the fate of The United States is sure to echo that of the Soviet Empire.
What’s worse than a “Bridge to Nowhere,” that actually goes somewhere, albeit a small island that does not justify a bridge at the expense of taxpayers? How about a road to nowhere that actually leads to the non-existent “Bridge to Nowhere?”
Sarah “Thanks but no thanks” Palin has a lot of nerve touting her opposition to the bridge, when not only did she actually support it in the beginning (until it became politically unfeasible), and end up taking the federal money; she also allowed the construction of the $26 million road leading to where the bridge was going to be built.
I believe that is the epitome of a “pork barrel project” as McCain would call it, if it had occurred under Democratic leadership.
…The only person in Washington who has the slightest clue what’s really going on. The man who has seen this coming for many years now, and warned everyone about it. It’s unfortunate that it takes an event like this to open people’s eyes to the soundness of Austrian economics, and the disaster that is brought about by Keynesian economics under which our government currently operates.
UPDATE: Another one this morning.
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