Marketing

My wife is a graphic designer and constantly harps on how hard the Obama Party, er I mean Dem party marketing a nonsense brand. That is why Pepsi and Ikea stole the marketing campaign right after the election. 

So I think this guy really hits the mark. 

And this...

This reminds me of why it is that a) the useful fools who voted for this moron will soon be either disenchanted or at best apathetic, and b) libertarians can have some common cause with bleeding hearts b/c we have BETTER answers for how to help the poor than the bleeding hearts do. The last 30 seconds of this video seriously almost moved me to tears. Throughout the ages the down trodden have been told that some guy is going to save them, when all along they just need the freedom to save themselves. 

Why I really dislike rich leftists that want to increase our taxes

This is why. 

How the West Was Done

I think we can now identify the precise moment at which we began our inexorable slide toward the death of our civilization.  It was the announcement this month that the EPA has made an endangerment finding vis a vis six Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). Hyperbolic? Unfortunately no. 

Let me see if I can do this is the unofficial 1Timmy4 word limit of 250 words:

Basically, in 2007 the SCOTUS determined in Mass v. EPA that states (along w/ private groups) had to right to sue the EPA to force it to regulate GHGs for motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA had to make a determination that either: 1) GHGs are a danger to public health and welfare, 2) GHGs are not a danger, or 3) there is not enough information.

Unsurprisingly, Obama's EPA has chosen option number one.

They claim they will just regulate automobiles (already a bad decision, but that is a different topic). However, since environmental groups can now sue to make EPA regulate gases, they can make the EPA regulate GHGs not just for automobiles, but under ALL of the CAA. 

The CAA was written several decades ago, and revised most recently 20 years ago, with the distinct intent of regulating really terrible pollutants that like kill people. Concrete plants, smelters etc. It sets actual limits (100 tons in some cases, 250 tons) of gases before regulation kicks in, and for poison like CO, sulphur that causes acid rain this works well. But, it is insane for carbon dioxide (which we all breath out by the way, you are a pollution source now...)

Your average mid-size office building or large restaurant emits this much GHG, depending on how they are fueled. Making possibly millions of previously unregulated sites subject to EPA permits will not only grind the EPA to a halt, it will mean the end of development as we know it. Obama and his minions know this and are basically daring Congress not to re-write the CAA to include Kyoto style limitations or cap and trade. But Congress has not shown any desire to lose their seats doing this. 

So, essentially the EPA has said, 'Congress, you pass wildly unpopular legislation or we will grind the economy to a complete standstill.' Great. As Glenn Reynolds has become fond of saying, the country is in the best of hands. 

High Speed Rail and Billion Dollar Whimsy

Oh man.  This has got to be the funniest Obama quote yet. Our brilliant President recently announced that we will be spending billions of dollars on a high speed rail system in the U.S. Being the hyper educated intellectual he is, I am sure we can see reams of data on the economic, geographic and political feasibility of such a boondoggle project! 

"I am always jealous about European trains," Obama said April 3 in Strasbourg, France. "And I said to myself, 'why can't we have high-speed rail?' And so, we're investing in that as well."

I am seriously. Apparently we are now replacing decision making with the whimsical comments of  college kids spending dad's money on Eurail passes and hash, while 'finding themselves' after graduation. 

This reason is topped only by an insightful Onion columnist of years past that blithely suggested we mimic another venerable European social invention.

Back in adult reality–I think the Cato analyst cited in the ABC article captured it best.

"You might as well have the government invest in nuclear-powered bicycles," Mitchell added. "That's probably the only thing I could imagine that would be more of a waste of money than inter-city rail."

Visuals Help a lot

A good Rule

Nassim Taleb is one of my favorite thinkers.  He has written a very interesting list of rules in the FT today.  Chief among these is as he puts it: 2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. 

We have, as he suggests, combined the worst of capitalism and socialism. I think that the worst mistake the liberal and the lay person makes these days is that anti-Corporatism is anti-Capitalism. If we really had capitalism we would not have all these behemoth corporations. We would have a smaller, more entrepreneurial society. 

It is socialist impulses that create large corporations. When tax, reporting, zoning, environmental regulation, min wage–whatever socialist laws you like–are put in place, it changes the economies of scale for doing business. Now only large corporations can spread these costs over enough units to stay afloat. 

Here is what I am saying: The same retards that clamor for 'buy local' and independent businesses vote for the very policies that make these businesses fail.

Here is the easy solution: Constitutionally limited government. This is what our Founders wanted to avoid. They have been diluted through 250 years of lobbying by big business or elites claiming to act for the 'people'.

I will say it again so even the dullest can appreciate it: pro-capitalist policies are often the exact opposite of pro-corporate policies. If we limited our government once again so that it is not for the socialist desires of the elite and big business, we would then have the small local, entrepreneurial economy that yuppie troglodytes claim they want.