Oh- Our Dear Leader!

Senate Votes to Spend Billions on No Name Bill

Seriously now.
Could we get a bigger gaggle of idiots converging in one place?
Bill to lavish money on public sector unions passed so quickly, it got no name.

I liked this comment on the subject from Radley Balko:

That’s right. A hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars spending bill made its way through Congress, and no one even noticed that the damn thing didn’t have a name. Which also means you can probably count on one hand the number of lawmakers who actually know what’s in the bill—and still have a finger left over to let them know what you think of this nonsense.

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In the House and Senate, they often publish amendments ahead of time, and it looks like someone was in a rush to get the amendment together, because they left blank lines where the new name of the bill should have been.
Take a look for yourself. Down toward the bottom of this page in the Congressional Record, it says, “SECTION 1. This Act may be cited as the “_______Act of______”. (The Library of Congress’ Thomas reporting system picked that up as the “XXXXXXAct ofXXXX,” so that’s how it shows up on our site.)
Well, THAT’s the amendment they brought up and passed, so the new name of the bill is the “_______Act of______.”
And that’s the way it might be signed into law.
You see, the Constitution requires both Houses of Congress to pass identical bills before they can be sent to the president and signed into law. The Senate has left town for the rest of August, and the House is coming back next week to put its stamp of approval on the bill.
President Obama wants to sign it quickly—the bill is already up on the Whitehouse.gov “pending legislation” page (though posting it there before the bill passes Congress doesn’t count as Sunlight Before Signing). So the House has to approve this bill, with the name “_______Act of______.”
The only other alternative is for the House to change the name and have the Senate come back for another vote.
Congress seems always to be hustling to get things done—even when it’s spending billions of taxpayer dollars. This time, they were hustling so fast to get the money moving that they couldn’t take the time to give the bill a proper name.


http://www.washingtonwatch.com/blog/2010/08/08/senate-passes-the-______act-of____-no-foolin/

The Good Old Days

People in general (but especially certain flavors of collectivists) chronically romanticize the good old days, before the industrial revolution ruined everything.
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The wealthiest place in the world in the 18th century was London.
• "London street dirt ... was a rich, glutinous mixture of animal manure, dead cats and dogs, ashes, straw, and human excrement. ... We complain of the pollution caused by petrol-driven engines. Imagine the sheer volume of faeces and urine excreted by the engines of eighteenth-century traffic -- that is, horses -- let alone the dung of the herds and flocks being driven through the streets to markets and abattoirs."
• London's water supply was contaminated with "the effect of rotting elm and lead, not to mention the miscellaneous refuse, dead dogs, and so on that found their way into the supply."
• "The kind of space we take as normal, at least separating children from parents at night, and having a room for sitting and watching television and doing homework, was a luxury only the prosperous enjoyed."
• "Nearly everyone had carious (decaying) teeth, even small children."
• "Riding in a chaise or chariot counted as exercise -- which shows how even the most improved vehicles bumped you about."
• "Butlers were entitled to keep and sell the ends of candles, an expensive commodity in the eighteenth century."
• "In the country the roads were abominable unless they had been 'turn-piked' and were maintained by a private company which charged for its services."
• "For 1751 the (life-expectancy) figure for both men and women in England and Wales has been estimated at 36.6 years. ... (B)etween 50 and 60 percent of London-born children died before their tenth birthday."
• "Pyorrhoea and scurvy were rampant. Both would loosen teeth. ... The leading French dentist Fauchard recommended one's own urine for cleaning one's teeth: always handy."
• "Soap was a major item in a family budget."
• "The life of a skilled or unskilled man or woman in the middle of the eighteenth century was unenviable. Hours were long, from five in the morning till seven at night from mid-March to mid-September, otherwise dawn to twilight, with one and a half hours off for meals, for a six-day week. Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were the only official holidays."
• "Working life began young. ... Master chimney sweeps took as many as four children at a time to do the dirty work, since none of them lasted very long, soot being carcinogenic. In 1785 Jonas Hanway estimated that there were about 550 climbing children in London. They were sometimes sent up even when the chimney was on fire. Extinguishing burning chimneys was the most profitable part of their master's business. They worked in soot and slept on soot, and had no way of cleaning themselves."
The above descriptions of life in the 18th century's wealthiest place warn us against romanticizing the past -- even a past as inspiring as revolutionary America. As important as the American Revolution was for preserving Americans' political freedoms, the Industrial Revolution was just as important for creating the high standard of living that we today take for granted.


http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/boudreaux/s_694274.html

US is Bankrupt- Worse Than Greece

Well, duh.  You only need 4th grade math to figure this one out, but Kotlikoff is better at measuring the extent of the nakedness of our Emperors than anyone else I know of.
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How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?
Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece
Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.

This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.

Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.
My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html

Some Crazy Karma

The ex-Senator Stevens plane crash incident was interesting enough, but here is the fateful twist:

"Stevens was one of two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others."

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_15738904?source=rss

Health Inspectors Shut Down Lemonade Stand

I suppose the only good that could come from this is a 7-year-old Libertarian:


After 20 minutes, a "lady with a clipboard" came over and asked for their license. When Fife explained they didn't have one, the woman told them they would need to leave or possibly face a $500 fine.

Surprised, Fife started to pack up. The people staffing the booths next to them encouraged the two to stay, telling them the inspectors had no right to kick them out of the neighborhood gathering. They also suggested that they give away the lemonade and accept donations instead and one of them made an announcement to the crowd to support the lemonade stand.

That's when business really picked up -- and two inspectors came back, Fife said. Julie started crying, while her mother packed up and others confronted the inspectors. "It was a very big scene," Fife said.

Technically, any lemonade stand -- even one on your front lawn -- must be licensed under state law, said Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention program manager for the state's public health division. But county inspectors are unlikely to go after kids selling lemonade on their front lawn unless, he conceded, their front lawn happens to be on Alberta Street during Last Thursday.

"When you go to a public event and set up shop, you're suddenly engaging in commerce," he said. "The fact that you're small-scale I don't think is relevant."

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/08/portland_lemonade_stand_runs_i.html

Early Color Photos 1939-1943

I thought these were cool- government agency photos from a time when we expect everything to be in black & white.  Plays with your perspective- makes those days seem more recent. In the one below, note the handwritten news on the window at the newspaper office:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/2363/

Ghosts of WWII

Amazing images (HT: Dan Lynch):

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/the-ghosts-of-world-war-iis

Mama takes the Kodachrome Away

What do you shoot when you are entrusted with the last roll of film?

Betting its future on digital photography, Kodak discontinued the slide and motion-picture film with a production run last August in which a master sheet nearly a mile long was cut up into more than 20,000 rolls. McCurry requested the final 36-exposure strip. After nine months of planning, he embarked in June on a six-week odyssey. Trailing him was a TV crew from National Geographic Channel, which plans to broadcast a one-hour documentary early next year.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=39686

Obama unpopular because initiatives TOO SMALL

Yep, that's right- According to Reich, the people are against the Obama agenda because the stimulis was too small to work, the healthscare bill was "not large or bold enough",  not enough homeowners were bailed out, and the Dodd-Frank bill is not invasive enough.  If only these things were done on a grander scale, they would have worked, and we would all be praising Obama's boldness.  You see, his agenda is the right course, it was just too constrained by the opposition. Got it?

Consider the stimulus package. Although it's difficult to separate the consequences of fiscal and monetary policy, most knowledgeable observers conclude that the stimulus has had a positive effect. Real GDP is now increasing at an annual rate of 2.4%, and although the recovery is still fragile it's unlikely we'll fall back into a full-fledged recession.
Yet the official rate of unemployment remains above 9%, not including millions either too discouraged to look for work or working part-time when they'd rather have full-time jobs. Almost half of the jobless have been without work for more than six months, a level not seen since the Great Depression.
The central problem continues to be inadequate aggregate demand. The administration's original sin was not spending enough and focusing the stimulus more directly on job creation.
...
A stimulus too small to significantly reduce unemployment, a TARP that didn't trickle down to Main Street, financial reform that doesn't fundamentally restructure Wall Street, and health-care reforms that don't promise to bring down health-care costs have all created an enthusiasm gap. They've fired up the right, demoralized the left, and generated unease among the general population.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703999304575399420815017804.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h