Category Archives: The Economy

Why are hard facts always cold?

Posted on January 29, 2014 | 2 comments

Ditherton Wiggleroom (as Vodkapundit calls Wormtongue) in his SOTU:

“The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by…”

Recovery? In his dreams. Obamacare has taken care of the recovery by effectively putting a cap on middle class income.

But why, I ask, must the hard facts always be cold? For that matter why must the facts be hard? (Other than that the “genuis” public speaker DW always speaks in cliches and platitudes?) A lot of his “facts” are pretty squishy. Like this one:

“Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar…”

And this beaut: “…the debate is settled.  Climate change is a fact.”

Just once I’d like to hear Wiggleroom speak of the hot, soft facts. It would certainly be more original. And the soft part more honest.

Naw. Never happen.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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Ninety million idle Americans

Posted on January 23, 2014 | 2 comments

I’m older than Victor Davis Hanson but he’s far more pessimistic. He has his reasons. He works in a university bloated with administrators enforcing petty rules, and tenured professors who don’t teach while low-paid lecturers do the actual work of so-called “higher” education.

Some commenters called me out for ageism for doubting the intelligence of a generation defying the thermometer to walk around in basketball shorts in the snow. I suppose they would apply the same to Hanson’s negative views of modern culture. But he has better access to statistics than the rest of us and he’s come up with a whopper.

“Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.

“Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young. The former help the disabled, the latter take resources from them…Given that the number of non-working is growing (an additional 10 million were idled in the Obama ‘recovery’ alone), it is likely to keep growing. At some point, we will hit a 50/50 ratio of idle versus active. Then things will get interesting. The percentage of workers’ pay deducted to pay for the non-working will soar even higher.”

The claims of these entitled idle already are impacting the few Americans willing to serve in the military. But they’re easy pickings in a society that increasingly neither understands nor values them. When it gets around to robbing civilian Alphonse to pay civilian Aloysius, however, things could get messy.

Glad I won’t (probably) be around to see that. One of the advantages of age.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Culture, The Economy

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B.O. plays the race card

Posted on January 21, 2014 | 4 comments

No surprise. It’s the only card left in his feckless deck. And it was the first one Democrats dealt in the early days whenever his majesty the Lizard King was criticized for anything.

Now, after almost eight six years of cliche-ridden speeches and incompetent governance, with B.O.’s popularity polling at roughly 39 percent approval, all he has left is whining about how people don’t like him because of his half-race. Boo hoo.

I can think of lots of other reasons, Barry: the lies, the high unemployment, turning the IRS into a political machine, that “son I never had” nonsense about a gold-grill thug.

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Posted in Obamalot, The Culture, The Economy

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IRS abuse of conservative groups to continue

Posted on January 17, 2014 | 4 comments

With the FBI in the bag (refusing to investigate previous IRS abuses), the Democrats are strengthening the tax agency’s ability to throttle the Tea Party and other conservative political groups. The abuses shall go on!

Their aim? The November elections, of course, where Democrats might be vulnerable due to the Obamacare train wreck, the continued dormant economy and high unemployment, and the NSA spying revelations.

“It’s IRS targeting all over again, only this time by administration design and with the raw political goal—as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) notes—of putting ‘tea party groups out of business.'”

Meanwhile the IRS will allow the unions that normally support Democrat pols and policies, to continue on their merry political way as always. The IRS: A Democrat political machine.

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Posted in The Economy

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Freezing or starving in the dark

Posted on January 13, 2014 | 4 comments

When their climate models predicting the end of snow and rising sea levels proved faulty, the global warmists changed their game to foreseeing a trend to “extreme” weather, even as extreme weather events declined. Where pols adopted their anti-carbon dioxide policies, people in Europe are freezing or starving.

Weather Bell Analytics meteorologist Joe D’Aleo: “In the UK 12 million people are said to be in fuel poverty, having to choose between heating and eating…In Germany 600,000 homes had their electricity turned off during the last brutal winter as electricity prices skyrocketed, and the country is rushing to build 10 coal fired plants to lower costs.”

Meanwhile, the Democrat’s EPA works up regulations to put our coal-fired electric plants out of business and replace them with low- and intermittent-power windmills incapable of meeting even current demand. And the Worm’s speechifying to stir up class envy fits nicely with the warmists’ real goal. They’re not out to save the planet.

D’Aleo: “UN climate official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted ‘one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.’  Instead, climate-change policy is about how ‘we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…’”

UPDATE:  The Weather Channel, a prominent purveyor of warmism’s “extreme weather” meme is dropped by carrier DirecTV. TWC bemoaned the future of public safety “at a time when the volatility and frequency of weather events seems to be increasing.” DirecTV replaced them with a cheaper alternative.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, The Economy, Weather/Climate

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Hot Times In The Oil Patch

Posted on January 8, 2014 | Comments Off on Hot Times In The Oil Patch

“I can hear them slinging pipe on the Flex 5 up the way and when I poke my head out the door, no less than a dozen flare stacks are runnin’ hot out across the pucker brush.”

An oil patch update from gate-guard Andy at My Old RV down well south of the rancho, and that’s without his new solo hearing aid:

“A rattling diesel sounds like they got a clothes dryer with 5 gallon of rock in it running overspeed on the passenger seat next to ‘em.  Walking on the caliche rocks sounds like I got feet like a brontosaurus.  The generator sounds like a 747 spooling up for take off. It is distinctly unpleasant and near painful.”

Yep. Wait’ll you try the two of ’em at once. You’ll be turning down the volume like I do.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Texana, The Economy

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Janitors with bachelor’s degrees

Posted on January 5, 2014 | 1 comment

A hundred and fifteen thousand of them, to be exact, according to Ohio University economist Richard Vedder. That’s what you get when you major in gender studies, sucker.

Meanwhile, the usual Democrat blather about pushing more people through college by handing out cheaper and cheaper loans is fueling an academic arms race that can only end poorly:

“The colleges raise their fees more than they otherwise would,” Vedder says. “This provides extra income for the colleges, which goes for a ton of different things — luxury facilities, more administrators, higher pay for people, and the like — and makes college less affordable.

“So the president, who is now talking, and says, “Gee, we ought to do something about this,” is instead of saying, “Well, let’s get to the root cause of this. Let’s get” — the one thing he can control or Congress can control — “let’s get rid of these programs, or let’s downsize them in some fashion,” instead is saying, “No, we want to keep these programs.”

Make them even bigger and badder. Wormtongue is such a genius.

“I think markets work,” says Vedder. “Sometimes they work slowly. Sometimes they work inefficiently because of subsidies and taxes and regulations imposed on markets that distort them. But I think kids are starting to say no. Enrollments are falling. They’re not rising right now in American higher ed.”

Via Instapundit.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Economy

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