Category: News

Although this story from yesterday has been retracted, I stand upon my inferences thereupon.

Viva la economie!

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Good news: The Missouri Legislature has begun the process of eliminating emissions tests required for automobile licensing in the St. Louis area. As cars become cleaner, these tests’ burden, in terms of resident money and time spent, have not yielded that many results. The sponsor says:

Bill sponsor Rep. Jim Lembke, R-south St. Louis County, said the testing is unnecessary, unpopular and a burden to the elderly and poor. He said the program should be eliminated because 92 percent of all vehicles pass the test and the biggest polluters – motorcycles and many trucks – are exempt from the law.

Good work. Hey, I once met Lembke, back when he was running unsuccessfully for the position he now holds. He was canvassing door-to-door, and I had to hammer him a bit on conservative consistency–particularly his love of “incentives” to draw industry to Lemay, but his opposition to welfare and government handouts to individuals. But enough about me.

The bad news: opposition invokes a scattering of silly reasons to keep the program running:

Rep. Barbara Fraser, D-University City, said ending the clean-air testing could exacerbate the symptoms of allergy sufferers and would mean the loss of 250 jobs.

Got that? A slightly runnier nose and throwing 250 hard-working bureaucrats into the private workforce. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Politicians like this think you can legislate full employment by creating enough government regulations and divisions and offices. It got us out of the Greast Depression, didn’t it?

Hmm, no, I think that was the techno-military-industrial complex gearing up for WWII, not the CCC. But hey, I was less alive than the Baby Boomers were to experience it first hand. What would I know?

Command Post reports:

The LA Times is reporting that presidential campaign spending in this cycle may exceed $1 billllllion dollars. (Thank God we have campaign finance reform.)

Hot digduggity! So that’s a billion dollars of excess wealth drained from willing participants in the political process to be spent and redistributed to print and broadcast media, creative agencies, and in bars and restaurants where sales are struck. God bless America, and it’s not compulsory. Unlike tax money for social programs, which are too often spent the same way.

Via Snopes.com, a story about President Bush jogging with an injured serviceman:

Attached is a picture of Mike McNaughton. He stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan Christmas 2002. President Bush came to visit the wounded in the hospital. He told Mike that when he could run a mile, that they would go on a run together. True to his word, he called Mike every month or so to see how he was doing. Well, last week they went on the run, 1 mile with the president. Not something you’ll see in the news, but seeing the president taking the time to say thank you to the wounded and to give hope to one of my best friends was one of the greatest/best things I have seen in my life. It almost sounds like a corny email chain letter, but God bless him.

You think John Kerry would trip over him and call him a son-of-a-bitch?

It’s hard to tell if the author and the sources for this piece in Time are helping Kerry, or damning him. Explaining why John Kerry sounds like an unprincipled opportunist when he’s just the opposite:

Kerry’s verbal meanderings are partly a reflection of a mind that sees complexity in almost every issue. The son of a diplomat, educated partly in boarding schools in Europe, Kerry learned to look at current affairs from multiple perspectives. Says an adviser: “It’s not like he’s trying to shade the truth. He overintellectualizes his explanations.” Asked by TIME in a March interview whether the Iraq war would be worth the costs if no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, Kerry replied, “No, I think you can still — wait, no. You can’t — that’s not a fair question. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn’t mean [transforming Iraq] was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go.” Kerry may in fact be right when he argues that a successful outcome does not justify an illegitimate war, but a listener has to work hard to understand his point.

You got that? No? Put a little effort into understanding it, and you’ll come away with the message that John Kerry is too smart for you to understand.

Perhaps the Kerry campaign should not deploy senators whose understanding of nuance match Kerry’s own:

“If you look at his public career, it’s been just the opposite. He’s not been unclear on the environment, on labor and education issues,” says former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey. “His reputation in the Senate is that you can trust his word. If he believes in something, he’ll fight for it.”

Got it?

• Kerry’s not been unclear.
  This does not say that he has been clear. Just that he is not unclear.
• His reputation … is that you can trust his word.
  This does not say that you can trust John Kerry’s word. This says his reputation is that you can trust his word. He’s got Senate cred, werd.
• If he believes in something, he’ll fight for it.
  This does not address whether Kerry says what he believes, nor whether he will fight for what he says he’ll fight for, or anything, really.

Thanks for not being a cartoonish or obfuscating character, little Kerrey. No, that sort of babble conveys precisely the slippery meaning the speaker intends, and both Kerry and Kerrey know it. They just have to tell the American people that they don’t, sort of, know it or mean it except when they don’t not.

More from the Brian J. Noggle “Capitalism: It’s All Good” School of Economics. Take this story, which says:

High gas prices are forcing families to shop in cut-rate grocery stores, a food industry analysis finds.

“High oil prices, both at the pump and for home heating, depress consumers’ ability to spend more,” said a report by the Food Marketing Institute released at its annual trade show in Chicago yesterday.

“It is not surprising that more shoppers are buying food today in discount stores and other low-price venues than ever before,” the study said.

It’s all good. As rational consumers, those who allocate their resources to fuel and to food discount stores are acting in their own best interests. The free market at work.

What about the grocers out there? Well, people are choosing low price over….what is it again a full grocery offers?

You see, the Brian J. Noggle “Capitalism: It’s All Good” School of Economics sees through every little ping of “bad” news as a net positive. When the man on the radio says copper prices are going up, that’s good for the miners and it’s good for the people who make alternatives to copper. Copper prices going down? Good for people who want to buy or make things with copper. Gas prices going up? Good for refineries and Big Oil, as well as for people who make hybrid automobiles, mass transit, and pastimes close to home. Gas prices coming down? Good for transportation companies, consumers, and tourist destinations.

Keep that in mind when these reports come out. The news is typically bad for whomever is releasing the report (well, probably good fro whomever got paid to prepare the doomsday scenario), but it’s good news for someone else, and it’s probably not zero sum. It’s better news for everyone when capitalism is unfettered.

Once again, highly paid academic consultants decide what’s good for cities: the creative class.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 29:

Yet another theory is dumping on St. Louis’ ability to create jobs, bashing the region and others like it on the most unlikely of economic measures: its lack of gays and bohemians.

It’s an argument waged by author Richard Florida, and it has set off a firestorm of debate about what makes up a vibrant economy.

Easy for someone to say, but what really makes a city? Hmm, why do people come together from their scattered hovels on the steppes? It’s because the city offers:

• Protection from nature and enemies. Better police coverage, fire protection, and better medical care than the small towns or rural areas.
• Jobs. A livelihood that does not involve slaughtering your own pigs or scratching dirt.
• Infrastructure. Since one’s not slaughtering one’s one pigs, one would prefer to not have to drive into the next town to visit the bazaar. One would also like roads, commerce, schools for the children, and other amenities that one cannot find in the wilderness.

Cities do not arise, or afall, because of gays and bohemians. The “artistic” class arises from a vibrant city.

Stupid schnucking city planners and elected officials keep shoveling money to consultants who want to elevate their cool, unemployed academic bohemian friends, all the while anticipating the day when they’re highly-paid consultants with with cool artistic friends.

From a story on Yahoo! news:

A judge gave a Tennessee zoo six months to convince him that an African elephant named Ruby is adapting well to her new home after being separated from a pachyderm friend in Los Angeles last year.

Judge George Wu ordered the report from the Knoxville Zoo on Thursday during a hearing in a lawsuit that seeks to return Ruby to the Los Angeles Zoo.

I think the judicial system’s rapidly becoming a joke, and this story is but one punchline among many.

According to Yahoo! news:

He is one of Hollywood’s best-compensated actors, but matinee idol Ben Affleck (news) came to the US Congress Thursday to lobby for higher pay for some of America’s lowest-paid workers.

Affleck, who earns millions per screen appearance, appeared alongside Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy to urge lawmakers to increase the federal minimum wage from its current five dollars and 15 cents per hour to seven dollars per hour.

Apparently, the pressure was getting to be too much, and Affleck had to open his mouth to let a little pressure out.

Instead of just talking the talk, Affleck could choose to spend his own damn money, of which there is no shortage from my vantage point but about which his fleet of accountants are undoubtedly concerned, to open a series of fast food restaurants and discount groceries wherein he could somehow pay workers $7.00 an hour and still keep in business. That would probably put some of his accountants in the morgue with heart failure, because they know (even if they don’t communicate this with their client) that higher labor costs and higher employment tend to work against each other, much like higher labor costs and affordable prices.

Instead of risking his own “earned” capital, Affleck wants to sacrifice that of real entrepreneurs. He chooses to “give at the office” by making other people and corporations pick up the tab for his community ideals, much like people who want to take care of the poor but don’t volunteer or donate because they already paid taxes but think the government could do more.

If the country were filled with people like you, Mr. Affleck and like-minded, we’d have a world….. well, much like the screwed-up one we have now.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows the voters the error of our ways:

Looking to go swimming at a St. Louis County park pool on Memorial Day or Labor Day?

Forget about it.

After voters this month narrowly turned down a sales tax increase to support county parks, the parks department is trimming five weeks off the swimming season.

Obviously, not forking over an extra sixteen and a half million dollars of our money every year has forced the county to prioritize its budget and trim some non-essential services. Unfortunately, this will infringe upon the pencilled-in right to swim found in the elaborately customized constitutions owned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Undoubtedly, this will impact the children, the seniors, and the poor disproportionately, as they don’t have swimming pools in their backyards. I guess we’ll read that in tomorrow’s Post-Dispatch.

Friends, were I in college today, odds are that I would not graduate.

Instead, I’d probably be in jail for assaulting one or more dishonorable cretins, or be killed by a rabid mob of the same.

As a columnist in the paper in my college days, I mocked many ideals, but never a death.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The debate over Missouri’s growing methamphetamine problem took a major turn Wednesday, as police from around the state demanded that some common cold pills used to make the drug be classified as regulated narcotics available only at pharmacies.

At issue is a chemical called pseudoephedrine. It’s an active ingredient in more than 80 over-the-counter remedies that are sold everywhere from gas stations to grocery stores. But pseudoephedrine also is a key ingredient in most recipes for meth, a powerful stimulant often called ice, crystal or crank.

Missouri last year toughened existing regulations on how much pseudoephedrine a store could sell to an individual customer, and added new restrictions on where those cold pills could be displayed. As a result, meth cooks and their helpers now must shop at dozens of stores to get the thousands of pills needed to make even a few ounces of meth.

Police at the summit said that without tougher regulations, the explosive increase in small meth labs will continue in Missouri and throughout the Midwest. Although most of the nation’s meth is made at a small number of large drug labs in Mexico and California, Missouri and the states it borders accounted for more than half of the meth-lab raids and related seizures last year.

In other news, fire marshals demanded that lighters, matches, and magnifying glasses be sold only over the counter as they can be combined with an accellerant to intentionally start a fire, MADD is protesting against the availabilty of fruits and dandelions to young people, who can then ferment them and drink the contents, and the anti-gun lobby to restrict the sales of steel, lead, and wood.

Legitimate purposes and rights are a threat to security. Just stand in your stall and bleat a little until its your turn, veal.

The City of San Francisco is running into budget problems because drivers just aren’t racking up the fines anticipated, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Bay Area’s sputtering economy has meant good news for San Francisco drivers, who have seen a drop in competition for the city’s notoriously scarce on-street parking spaces, but bad news for City Hall’s finance wizards who count on fines for illegal parking to help balance the budget.

Unfortunately, building fines and excise taxes into the budget lead to this sort of problem. The government needs people to do proscribed things, or it needs to proscribe more things to keep spooning citizens’ money down its sucking maw. People might shriek over a property tax increase, or might vote down a sales tax hike, but who’s going to oppose raising a parking ticket fine?

Until your dentist appointment runs over fifteen minutes, or you don’t know the lottery-style system of proper side-of-street parking (stay overnight in Milwaukee, eh?) and suddenly you’re paying $250.

The silver lining, if you’re looking for something positive to say about profligate spending outpacing revenue: The anticipated shortfall is only $4 million dollars in the $352 million dollar deficit San Francisco’s running this year.

In another attempt to save the consumer from himself, the Illinois Attorney General is cattle-prodding the Illinois legislature to the rescue. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Typical sob lead:

When Michael Rogers drove out of a car dealership three years ago in his newly purchased GMC Jimmy, he thought he understood the financing arrangement. The interest rate the dealership gave him on the loan – 20.95 percent – sounded high, but the dealer had explained that Rogers’ checkered credit history had required it, and he’d accepted that explanation.

“I thought it was a good deal for me,” said Rogers, 45, a former postal worker in Chicago who is on disability. “I knew I’d had some credit problems … so, I figured, ‘Yeah, my credit must be bad.’ I figured this was the punishment.”

After more than two years of paying $409 a month on the car, Rogers learned that he had actually been approved for a 9.25 percent loan from a lender. Unknown to Rogers, the dealership had then added the additional 11.7 percent itself, raising the final cost on the $17,000 car by almost $7,000.

Aw, poor baby. You know, I got socked with a .9 percent financing rate in March, 2001. A year later, rates were 0 percent as car makers tried to ensure continued sales after September 11. So I feel your pain, pinhead.

21% on a car? Jesus H. Gonzalez, but that’s a damn high rate to pay. Come to think of it, $17,000 is a lot to pay for a vehicle, especially at 21% interest. It took me almost four years to run my credit cards up to that amount, but that included a night at a “Fantasy Suite” establishment which included an in-room swimming pool, sauna, waterfall, and complimentary bottle of champagne. A lot to spend for one person, but at least it wasn’t $17,000. What’s my point?

Oh, yeah, you, Joe Stupid Consumer, are an IDIOT to spend that much on a car at that rate of interest and assume it’s the best rate without shopping around. Fortunately, the Daley State will come to your aid and will straitjacket business because you, the consumer, are mad.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan is pushing legislation that would require car dealers to tell customers how much of their car loan interest rate was determined by the lender, and how much the dealer has added on to it.

Thank heavens! The Illinois Government to the rescue!

The markup system is common in auto financing nationwide, including in Missouri. Lawmakers in Missouri are not considering any legislation to require disclosure of the actual loan rate.

The Post-Dispatch ruefully reports this, because it’s on the side of the working man in every contest wherein the reigning champion isn’t the newspaper industry.

One dealer promised to get a car buyer the “best” rate for a loan. The dealer offered the customer a loan at 16.95 percent interest. It turned out that the dealer was secretly paying 14.95 percent interest to a lender and pocketing the difference.

“I asked the dealer why he was charging my client a higher rate than the one approved for my client,” says Mitchell Stoddard, an attorney in St. Louis County. “And he looked me in the eye and said: ‘We gotta pay our bills.'”

All right, your crackhead investigative journalism has probably uncovered a dealer offering a deal to a subprime customer, wherein the dealer says the “best” rate, and probably means the “best” in the sense of the best in which the dealer would offer. Come on, PD, you don’t hammer advertiser Anheuser Busch in any advertisement wherein it proclaims any superlatives, particularly those including taste–so why come down hard on the poor SOB auto dealer who has bought a corner lot and a couple junkers in a throw at the American Dream?

I have sympathy for the business in this case because 1.) it’s someone taking a shot at making money, and 2.) it entered the contract with its eyes open, unlike the less-than-savvy consumers you defend. But the intelligent don’t need government, or crusading “journalism,” protection. They understand the free, voluntary exchange in any business transaction.

We’d also prefer you not pollute the swimming pool with more legislation and regulation, thanks.