Ruminations - 31jul14 (updated 3aug14)

 

George Rebane

Moonbeam’s bankrupt California continues to buy Latino votes with money we don't have. Our “balanced budgets” are achieved by not paying the state’s pension obligations.  And today facing over a half trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, the governor announces that the state will “shelter immigrants”, those munchkins dumped by the hordes across our y’all come border with Mexico (more here).  Never mind that California already is the nation’s leader in all the metrics tracking the poor, disabled, unemployed, ignorant, and stupid.

Local blogger and RR reader Todd Juvinall has more to say about the latest wave of juvenile illegal aliens.  He writes an excellent piece that appeared in the 30jul14 Union.  Give it a read (don’t know whether The Union has accepted the advice to un-paywall its op-ed page).

Doesn’t it just frost your external plumbing when you come to realize that the Fed has been promoting the fortunes of the dastardly one-percenters, and creating more inequality by keeping interest rates insanely low in order to counteract Obama’s destructive policies impeding economic recovery?  It is, of course, sold as part and parcel of the administration’s ongoing Big Lie claiming that it is all done to help Main Street counter Wall Street.  Ruchir Sharma at Morgan Stanley lifts the curtain for us with his ‘Liberals Love the One-Percent’ in the 30jul14 WSJ.  The dots to be connected are that the policy maintains the fat cats’ buying of political influence while camouflaging the administration’s fundamental transformation of America.

Did you see what the political scumbags in the Texas legislature are doing to the First Amendment to keep from having their corruptions being exposed by non-profit issue advocacy groups?  They are working through their Ethics Committee to reinterpret existing state election code to now require these groups to “register with the state, hire campaign accountants and attorneys, and file and disclose detailed reports on contributions, spending and their beneficiaries.  Violations are a criminal offense.” (more here)  Can you spell 'knee-buckling expenses'?

Returning to the Convention of States – the constitutional amendment procedure described in our Constitution’s Article 5 – about which I remain perplexed with a number of questions about its current direction and resulting efficacy having gone unanswered by the conservative proponents of launching such a convention.  I gave some background on the CoS in my 7apr14 post.

Various groups on the Right and Left are almost rabidly in favor of holding CoS as an answer to making changes in America’s governance that are not possible under the current Constitution as amended.  Each party's objectives are anathema to the other.  While the Right seeks to establish a requirement for fiscal prudence and limited government, which I support, the Left seeks to abridge/eliminate more freedoms and enlarge the scope and reach of Leviathan.

The bottom line is that, under current constitutional procedures, holding a controllable (by either party) CoS, or another Constitutional Convention, is nigh on impossible (more here).  However, this problem has been extensively studied and there are reasonable ways forward.  A particularly good piece of work was done by the Cato Institute and reported in its Policy Analysis #691 (18jan12) titled ‘Renewing Federalism by Reforming Article V – Defects in the Constitutional Amendment Process and a Reform Proposal’.  I’d sure like to see someone on the Right in the leadership of their CoS initiative, someone like, say, Mark Meckler respond to Cato’s analysis of the problem and its proposed way forward.  Simply dismissing criticisms of the current efforts toward a CoS with denigrations and/or crickets is not productive.

[1aug14 update]  RR readers will recognize that today’s announcement of 200K+ jobs in July is just treading water and not a cause for celebration, even though we have a modest surge of hopeful people entering the job market and thereby giving truth to the ongoing doldrums by driving the unemployment rate up to 6.2%.  The natural net accretion of working age people in America (out of the education pipeline and immigrants) is somewhere in the 200-250K per month range.  Creating that many jobs is required to just absorb the newbies; recovery, let alone growth, requires a significantly higher job creation rate.  The details of all this were explained here and here.

[3aug14 update]  Leviathan implementing Agenda21 right down to the donuts and cupcakes that can be made and sold by volunteers at school bake sales.  The scheme is simple - take their money at gunpoint, give part of it back to (partially) fund schools, roads, hospitals, bridges, waterways, utilities, ..., then attach whatever liberties limiting regulations you want to the refunds under threat of witholding the refunds for non-compliance (more here).   It sure seems that progressives see no infringement of *their* liberties as long as government does not interfere with how, where, when, and with whom (or what) they can induce orgasm.  Everything else can have the bejeezus regulated out of it with no nevermind from the Left with the proviso that someone else can be made to pay for all ensuing costs related to their practice of such freedoms.  Rampant fascism.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

Govern Brown wants to open the southern boarders of California to all the minorities that wish to come. He wants to import more fresh bodies for the progressive to abuse. According to Joel Kotkin writing at New Geography California has the worst income inequality, after New York City, than all the other blue states, where progressive have made it the standing order of the day.

But New York is hardly the only progressive stronghold with searing inequality. A recent Brookings report found that of the regions with the greatest income disparity only one, Atlanta, is located in a red-leaning state. These include San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, Oakland, Chicago and Los Angeles. The lowest degree of inequality was found generally historically more conservative cities like Ft. Worth, Texas; Oklahoma City; Raleigh, N.C.; and Mesa, Ariz. Income inequality has risen most rapidly in the probably the most left-leaning big American city of luxury progressivism, San Francisco, where the wages of the poorest 20% of all households have actually declined amid the dot-com billions. [Emphasis added]

Another excerpt from Kotkin's article:

Nowhere is this relationship between job growth and racial disparities clearer than in California, where regulations have slowed construction and industrial growth even as Silicon Valley has enjoyed a giddy boom. In Silicon Valley, Hispanic and African-American incomes have sagged, as manufacturing and many middle management positions have been reduced. But the real problems for poorer and minority residents can be seen in the state’s interior regions, where many communities still suffer close to double digit unemployment or worse.

Do we need more minorities who cannot find jobs and must be supported with tax payer dollars. Dollars that cannot be invested in starting new business.

Kotkin closes with this:

. . . But real progress on race and poverty requires a growing economy that provides opportunities for the broadest part of population. Clearly the regulatory and tax regimes that stunt middle- and working-class opportunities does not help. Blue-state progressive can whine about race, inequality and poverty with the best of them, but they would contribute far more if they started to address these issues with something other than well-rehearsed indignation and rhetoric.

A growing economy is the only solution, but progressives have legislated any future economic expansion out of existence in California. Many red states are growing, progressive blue states no so much.

Full Article is HERE.

[fish]

....in the visuals I can do without category!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/vice-president-biden-loves-skinny-dipping-new-book-article-1.1887901

[Bill Tozer]

Its a fool's errand to swap one Reagen job for 3 -4 Obama "jobs".
What kind of jobs is our economy creating? Now, that hasn't changed from Obama first term to Obama jobs 2nd term. Just dig into the job numbers and you will see why Burger Basin is keeping its doors open. Burger Basin keeps creating jobs. Hang on while I grab a vibrator over all this good news.

In a cruel twist of fate, Obama are has made it easier to fire employees. Instead of keeping them on the company policy and going through the big expense of firing a bad apple with severance packages that includes covering their medical for a long time, now they can show them the door and toss them on Obamacare. Just made it easier.

Was is not Obama himself that was boasting that people no longer have to work more than 30 hours a week now because of his signature health plan?? His boast is looking true when you dig into the employment data.