Then why isn’t the Federal Government letting go of fonts of Federal workers so they can get unemployment benefits? Might it be because the benefits of actually working are so much more than the unemployment benefits? Working for the Federal Government, itself, certainly has some nice benefits.
At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The [...]
It’s an awful thing in a country when its people no longer believe the government protects them and their rights. Yet, a new poll shows that’s exactly where Americans are headed right now.
In a Rasmussen poll of 1,000 adults taken last Friday and Saturday, nearly half, or 48%, said they see government today as a threat to their rights. Just 37% disagreed. The poll also found that only one in five (21%) believe current government has the consent of the governed.
In other words, people think much of what our government does today is illegitimate — [...]
This describes, exactly, the mentality of the big government liberals. Unemployment not only allows people who want to work money to live on until they can find work, it also creates new jobs by giving people money to spend. Now where did the money come from to pay those unemployment benefits? Out of thin air?
This article by Victor David Hanson, comparing the way the US is being run to the views of a faculty lounge at any given college, is well worth reading.
We are being run by the mindset of the faculty lounge, as if the philosophy or English department has taken over running the country. Let me adduce some random examples. … Tax proposals in haywire fashion are thrown out almost every day from various Obamians, as if at a faculty bull session over coffee. Can we count them all — much less can small businesses plan to hire a worker [...]
It’s easy to focus on the obvious aspect of this story: the wasting of our tax dollars for what is essentially becoming a fraud of a process, the census. The Census, over time, has become a process used by the left to gain power in America, rather than an honest evaluation of who actually lives here. By twisting the Census into a basis for income redistribution, the left has twisted the Census from being a method to determine fair representation based on the number of people who live in each area to being a method to achieve “social [...]
The point of the chart is, of course, that per capita income in most US states is higher than in most countries in the EU—do we really want EU style socialism? But there’s another significant point to be made. Being in the government pays, doesn’t it? The per capita income of Washington DC is twice that of the highest state—and it just so happens that Delaware is where most folks who work in Washington DC and can’t afford the housing live (and commute from).
Of course, we always knew entertainers make a lot of money, but now we [...]
A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor. That’s just one of the many self-evident conclusions to emerge from a dangerously misguided antipoverty program begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. Bloomberg’s initiative, Opportunity NYC”“Family Rewards, bestows cash rewards on (for the most part) single parents and their children if they act responsibly—by attending school, for example, or by working. Interim results for New York’s effort, which is modeled on a program in Mexico that targeted agricultural peasants, are now in. Not [...]
HFA members may remember a previous article we published about the FDA invading an Amish farm. The story continues with agents invading the Amish farm in Pennsylvania yet again at 5 a.m. to inspect cow-milking facilities then followed up the next day with a written notice that the farmer was engaged in interstate sale of raw milk in violation of the Public Health Services Act. A failure to correct the situation could result in “seizure and/or injunction,” the warning letter from Kirk Sooter, district director of the Philadelphia office of the Department of Health and Human Services, told [...]
Twelve-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth grabbed an order of French fries after school on her way to the Tenleytown/American University Metrorail station in Washington, D.C. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had decided to kick off a week of “zero tolerance” enforcement of “quality of life offenses.” When a police officer noticed Ansche, unaware of the no-eating rule on the metro, consuming her first French fry, she was immediately searched; her jacket, backpack, and shoelaces were confiscated; and she was handcuffed and taken to the Juvenile Processing Center in a paddy wagon. Ordinarily an adult is fined on a first [...]
Happy Meal toys and other promotions that come with high-calorie children’s meals will soon be banned in parts of Santa Clara County unless the restaurants meet nutritional guidelines approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors. “This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children’s’ love of toys” to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. “This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.” -Los Angeles Times
I don’t often eat at McDonald’s; I don’t like the taste of their food, nor do I like the toys in their happy meals. On [...]
President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the public to create video advertisements that explain why federal regulations are “important to everyone.”
The contest, which ends May 17, will award $2,500 to the makers of the video that best explains why federal regulations are good and how ordinary citizens can become more involved in making regulations. The videos must be posted on YouTube and can be no more than 60-90 seconds in length.
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As explained in the EPA press release announcing the contest, the purpose of the videos will be to remind the public that federal regulation touches “almost [...]
“Hey, Mac, give me your wallet!” “What are you going to do with the money?” “Use it to buy a gun.” “And then?” “I’ll the gun to take your house. So give me your wallet, or I’ll bust you!”
Many days, I feel like this is our sole interaction with the government. For instance:
Officials are looking to convince residents in the Washington, DC metropolitan region that converting every local streets into toll roads would be good for them. The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board last Wednesday voted to seek federal gas tax funds to bankroll a $400,000 [...]
Free markets depend on truth telling. Prices must reflect the valuations of consumers; interest rates must be reliable guides to entrepreneurs allocating capital across time; and a firm’s accounts must reflect the true value of the business. Rather than truth telling, we are becoming an economy of liars. The cause is straightforward: crony capitalism. … Why has this happened? Financial services regulators failed to enforce laws and regulations against fraud. Bernie Madoff is the paradigmatic case and the Securities and Exchange Commission the paradigmatic failed regulator. Fraud is famously difficult to uncover, but as we now know, not [...]
The ugly is that this debt load (currently $12.8 trillion, more or less) presents interest expense. If the Fed Funds Target was to reach just five percent, and every bit of the Treasury debt was to be refinanced into overnight obligations at that same 5%, the interest expense alone of the current debt would be $640 billion a year. If the Treasury was to have to pay a roughly 6% average coupon (reasonably aggressive with a 5% Fed Funds Target) the interest expense would be $768 billion annually. To put this in perspective that is an amount roughly equivalent [...]
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