Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Employment barely grew in November and the jobless rate unexpectedly hit a seven-month high, hardening views the Federal Reserve would stick to its $600 billion plan to shore up the fragile recovery.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 39,000, with private hiring gaining only 50,000, a Labor Department said on Friday. However, data for September and October was revised to show 38,000 more jobs were gained in those months than previously estimated.
The unemployment rate in November jumped to 9.8 percent, a troubling sign for an economy many had thought was strengthening. Economists had expected 140,000 new jobs last month with the jobless rate holding steady.
“The U.S. economy has yet to achieve the escape velocity needed to improve the worrisome jobs picture,” Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief investment offer at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California.
No hiring, few working, little to none among the new businesses being launched. Local, state and federal governments awash in red ink with nobody left to tax.
How much more evidence does one need before one is ready to chisel the epitaph? How about…every single city with a population greater than 250,000 mired deeply in liberalism, with a democrat mayor and a big ol’ mess of leftists on every council and advisory panel. And, in all those cities, the primary metropolitan newspapers splash whiny human-interest stories on every single square inch, every single day, of someone being dependent on a government program and they’re in dire straights because the budget is going to get cut again. Because that municipality just can’t make ends meet.
When everybody, everywhere, has run out of things to tax. And the demands for more and more government largess just keep right on rolling in.
When it’s like that in all fifty states, all across the fruited plain, from sea to shining sea…can we then proclaim that liberalism doesn’t work?
Or no. Will it somehow be Bush’s fault.
Much thanks to Neo-Neocon for this bit of unpleasant reality.
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The situation might be much worse than this. Over at American Thinker, Janice Crouse has published a graph that indicates that GDP has been declining for 12 years and nonfarm employment has been declining for 20 years:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/graph_for_the_day_for_december.html
If this is true, there is a very large restructuring of our economy going on that the Fed and Treasury and the rest of the government and economists seem to have missed.
- Bob Sykes | 12/04/2010 @ 06:32Perhaps the time is right for a national debate on the purpose of taxes. Are they for raising revenue, for rewarding/punishing behavior, or both?
This would serve two purposes: One, for those whose position is “don’t worry about the effect that punitive taxation has on the economy, let us go ahead and do it because we’re really super-smart and it is our role to tell everybody else how to live” — it would force them to put that argument into words, and use it alongside their names. As opposed to allowing that thought to just permeate the atmosphere in its current, ethereal form, assuming corporeal structure only when it is threatened and then reverting to a gaseous state again right afterward.
Two, the facts would have to come out in order to substantiate the debate. What effect do revenues from the estate tax have on our federal government’s immediate and long-term outlook? Capital gains tax? Corporate income tax? When Clinton raised the highest marginal tax rate, how much revenue did we realize from that increase two years afterward? Five years? More?
The phrase “punitive taxation” also fits on a bumper sticker, with room left over for more words. The liberals should be helping the conservatives to make this the centerpiece of the 2012 campaign; if their plans for saving the economy really do bear fruit by then, it will be a losing issue for Republicans, who can then be painted easily as extremist zealots getting all hung up on trivialities. IF the economy improves, that is. Only if it improves.
- mkfreeberg | 12/04/2010 @ 07:39