Government Shutdown

And the Federal Government has shut down, as of yesterday, with only "essential" personnel working. "Essential" personnel apparently includes "people to close National Parks and monuments which don't ordinarily have any NPS staff, don't ever close, and don't cost any money to keep open", such as the WW2 Memorial in DC. Because they're being spiteful and petty and, oh wait, the Government Is Our Friend. Trust the Government.

Stupid and Evil

"We have a two-party system in America: The Evil Party, and the Stupid Party. And every once and a while the Evil Party and the Stupid Party get together to pass something really evil and stupid. That’s called ‘bipartisanship.’ " -- attributed to a Congressional staffer circa 1989

I'd say that each party is evil on some things, and stupid on some things, and there's some overlap.

Conspiracy Theorists

From a Facebook post, slightly edited:

Conspiracy Theorists suck at their jobs!
Where was the outcry warning us that the IRS was secretly attacking right wing organizations in an effort to stage a coup by fixing the results of a presidential election in the United States?
Where was the outcry that the DOJ was illegally harassing journalists to force them to disclose their sources on stories which relate to national security?
Why, for the love of God, didn't the Conspiracy Theorists warn us that the NSA is reading Verizon subscribers text messages?
YOU PEOPLE ARE LAYING DOWN ON THE JOB !
And I'm being told that list is a comprehensive list of the stuff the Obama Administration has actually been doing, and been caught at just in the last 30 days. 

Sadly, none of this really surprises me. 

Fiscal cliff

As expected, after a stupid amount of brinksmanship and name calling, the government finally got around to passing something dealing with the Fiscal Cliff. As expected, despite promises that taxes would not be raised on the middle class, taxes were raised on the middle class. Because what we really need, with an economy teetering on the brink of another round of recession, is more taxes.

I suspect if 536 people were credibly told "If, at this time next year, unemployment is above 6%, or GDP growth is less than 2%, or inflation is more than 3%, you will all be shot", our economic problems would be fixed in short order. And if not, the next batch of 536 would certainly be motivated to make sure they got it right.

Election

Well, that was a disaster.

I knew Romney was running behind in the polls but there was talk that several of the polls had biased sampling. It looked like he might win. And then...I dunno. The central issue of the campaign should have been the economy. Romney has a record of being a talented turn around artists, exactly what we need; while Obama can only be regarded as a dismal failure on the economic front, with more months of 8%+ unemployment in this one term than than there have been in total from 1945-2008, not to mention "quantitative easing" (ie diluting the money supply and pretending the resulting inflation doesn't happen), running up a multi-trillion dollar debt, wasting money on "green" companies which go bankrupt, the impending jobs implosion which will result from Obamacare, and so on.

And yet...they voted him in again.

As I drove in to work today, musing over the election results, I was reminded of a girl I knew, a girl who got into a relationship with a guy who promised to take care of her and make her happy. And he did occasionally do nice things for her, but he was pretty slack in other areas, and never hesitated to lie to her about a thing if he didn't feel like talking about it.

And then she found out that he'd been borrowing money left and right--from his friends, his relatives, her friends, anyone he could talk into lending it, and maxing out her credit cards. Some of the money he spent on things that really were necessities, but a lot of it was stuff they didn't need and couldn't afford, like another weekend vacation, or the Xbox he gave to his buddy.

I kept telling her "you need to get out of that relationship", and intellectually, she knew she was being abused; but she was emotionally tied to the guy and just kept hoping things would...somehow...all work out.

Derecho

We had a derecho, which in this case was a windstorm which came from the Chicago area to the DC area and caused a lot of damage, somewhat like the occupant of the White House. No significant damage here but fallen trees and power outages through much of Virginia, with 100° temperatures.

Obamacare

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was more or less upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, with John Roberts, usually considered a conservative, casting the deciding vote. Some are saying Roberts bowed to pressure from the Administration; some are saying this is a brilliant political ploy by Roberts--which sounds to me like wishful thinking, although it's true that immediately after the decision, Romney's campaign was receiving so many donations that the website couldn't keep up. As for me, I think this quote sums it up:

It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

--John Roberts. Chief Justice, SCOTUS

Are you better off?

Mark Steyn, in the Orange County Register:

"Ask yourself – are you better off now than you were four years ago?

But, in fact, you don't need to ask yourself, because the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances has done it for you. Between 2007 and 2010, Americans' median net worth fell 38.8 percent – or from $126,400 per family to $77,300 per family. Oh, dear."

As the Professor says, read the whole thing.

The Federalist Solution

Jonah Goldberg talks about how the solution isn't to push the Federal government Left or Right, but rather disempowering it in favor of localities:

Pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible — while protecting basic civil rights — guarantees that more people will have a say in how they live their lives. Not only does that mean more people will be happy, but the moral legitimacy of political decisions will be greater.

hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy

20th GOP Debate

Who came up with the idea for the GOP to have TWENTY debates? Seriously. Best line for tonight (as taken from Stephen Green, Vodkapundit):

Mitt: “Is this program critical enough to be worth borrowing from China to pay for it? If not, I’ll eliminate it.”

(Stephen: I so wish he weren’t lying)

(edit) Or possibly the best line was:

Newt: “When you have government as the central provider of services, you inevitably move toward tyranny."

Let's see....I don't think Mitt is leader enough, Newt is stable enough, Ron Paul has a grasp of foreign policy, or Santorum is sharp enough. I'd hold my nose and take any of them over Obama, of course, but why can't we come up with some good candidates?

From "Armed and Dangerous"

Armed and Dangerous: "Two bits of science news appeared on my radar today with not much in common except that they’re both exceedingly bad news for the political class. That more or less guarantees that they’ll get poor or nonexistent coverage in the mainstream media and is a good enough reason for me to write about them."

Concentration of Wealth

"I fear a concentration of wealth, regardless of any improvements alleged to happen because of it."

So we're agreed. The government should be deprived of assets and income. I mean, is there a more frightening concentration of wealth than the state itself, with armed force and law to enforce its monopoly?

--Michael Z Williamson

GOP Debate

A response I heard: "Some did better than others, but I'd vote for any one on that stage over Obama. Including the sound tech."

US Debt

Here's a visualization of the US debt, at Kleptocracy Education. Hat tip: Barbra.

Why the budget talks collapsed

The more detailed version is at Keith Hennessey's blog, but the short form is that Obama didn't stick to what he'd agreed to, and Boehner did. Which is hardly a surprise.

Clarity vs Disinformation

From comments on Armed and Dangerous:

“He is trying on an Orwellian distortion of the past in order to deform the future.”
Not only is that brilliant writing, but it hits at a core dysfunction in current cultural evolution. The two competing behaviors are clarity versus disinformation. Early in our species development, communication was comparatively slow and clarity conferred an evolutionary advantage to a group’s survival probability, e.g. a shout of warning when danger was near. We now live in a world of hyper-fast communication in which information overload can work against clarity. A small, but growing, segment of the population is experimenting with disinformation as a means of achieving parochial advantage.

Larry Correia's Happy Tax Day

Larry Correia is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Monster Hunter International and Monster Hunter Vendetta, plus four other books to be released this year. And he's an accounting type, as you might have guessed from reading MHI. He has a beautiful rant on Tax Day which you should read now, and at every election.

Politics as usual is over

From Armed and Dangerous

Tiny Cuts, Big Complaints

Reason Magazine has an article on Tiny Cuts, Big Complaints. The first paragraph points out that Federal spending will be about $3.8 trillion, whereas the cuts are $61 billion--yet people are complaining about it. I suspect that part of the problem is that "61" looks large compared to "3.8". So instead, say that we're going for 61 billion in cuts out of a 3,800 billion budget.

Three thousand eight hundred billion dollars. This year.

Koch Industries

An article in the Wall Street Journal by Charles Koch, talking about crony capitalism and bloated government.