Category: News

Hey, let’s do it like the Canadians:

The Lower Mainland’s health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.’s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints.

Critics say the payments mean the government’s strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding.

“You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency,” NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.

(Link seen on Surber.)

WHO: Swine flu pandemic has begun, 1st in 41 years:

The World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic Thursday – the first global flu epidemic in 41 years – as infections in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere climbed to nearly 30,000 cases.

The long-awaited pandemic announcement is scientific confirmation that a new flu virus has emerged and is quickly circling the globe. WHO will now ask drugmakers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine, which it said would available after September. The declaration will also prompt governments to devote more money toward efforts to contain the virus.

The difference between yesterday and today? A proclamation from above.

Claim of 600,000 “jobs created or saved” + ACORN = 632,092 new workers with names like Mickey Mouse, Peter Parker, and Iluv Obama.

Doug Ross collects a list of triumphant headlines regarding socialized medicine in this post.

Remember, every dead citizen is cost savings in a government budget.

That Air France plane that crashed on its way from Rio to Paris? The authorities, meaning whomever the papers are quoting and not necessarily authoritative on anything, are quick to dismiss a terrorist bomb.

Authorities these days are quick to dismiss terrorism in any catastrophe for fear of fanning the flames of fear.

Instead, they’re trying to soothe the public by saying the plane probably just fell apart in midair.

That doesn’t exactly make me want to hop on a plane. Call me crazy, but call me a cab for my next trip across country.

I think Obama’s speech on Muslimism given in the land where The Mummy was set will prove to be as fundamentally game-changing in the world as his paradigm-shifting speech on race was in the United States. It will be taught in textbooks and quoted by the citizens of the world by memory, just like school children now recite the verbal gems he deployed when distancing himself from that one guy.

‘They stole my little girl,’ says mother judged too stupid to care for her baby:

A young mother who was judged too stupid to care for her own baby has accused social workers of ‘stealing’ the child from her.

The woman, who must be identified only as Rachel for legal reasons, is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights in a last ditch attempt to halt the adoption of the child, now aged three.

She has told the Mail that she was bitterly unhappy with her treatment at the hands of social workers at Nottingham City Council.

Her daughter, referred to only as K, was born three months prematurely with severe medical complications. Officials felt the first-time mother lacked the intelligence to cope with the child and care for her in safety.

K was eventually discharged from hospital and given to a foster family.

But although her health has now improved to the point where she needs little or no day-to-day care, the child is due to be handed to adoptive parents within three months.

Rachel will then be barred from further contact.

The adoption is going ahead despite a recent psychiatrist’s report which declared that the 24-year-old has ‘good literacy and numeracy and that her general intellectual abilities appear to be within the normal range’.

It said the unemployed former cleaner had no previous history of learning disability or mental illness.

Given that you, ma’am, have determined that judicial wisdom is racially or experientially relative with this quote:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Could you please elaborate on the complete hierarchy of wisdom and jurisprudence in your worldview. For example, where do blacks and Asian-ancestored people fall? Are they above white males (probably) but below Hispanics? Also, how do substrata within the ethnic groups fall, for example Korean versus Pakistani or Mexican (Aztec-influenced) versus Guatamalan (more Mayan in identity)? Aside from national origin, are there other hardship modifiers to calculate, such as physical handicaps or socio-economic upbringing? For example, does a Caribbean with a limp trump the son of a Panamanian business leader?

As a white male blogger and hence probably less wise than a well-trained golden retriever, I’d like the complete scale to make sure we’re not settling for someone who is limited to the middle of the wisdom scale.

Obama to crack down on business taxes:

President Barack Obama plans changes to tax policy certain to be unpopular with corporations with international divisions and individuals who use tax havens.

Obama’s two-part plan, which he is slated to unveil at the White House on Monday, also calls for 800 new federal tax agents to enforce the system.

The president’s proposal would eliminate some tax deductions for companies that earn profits in countries with low tax rates, as well as consider U.S. citizens who use tax havens in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands guilty of violating U.S. tax laws.

It’s going to raise $21 billion a year in revenue, minus unintended consequences.

Or, to put it in perspective, 1/100th of the new deficit spending the President and the Democrat-controlled Congress has incurred. Not counting forthcoming cap-and-trade plans and national health care bills. And all unintended consequences forthcoming.

Full disclosure: This change will affect me because I am a capitalist Fat Cat who bought a couple hundred bucks’ worth of stock in a Taiwanese chipmaker, and I get to knock off the taxes I pay to the government of Taiwan. You know who else is a corporate Fat Cat in this scenario? Anyone with an International Fund selection in a mutual fund, 401(k), or retirement plan. You know, you.

Candidate Obama promised not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year or whatever. President Obama, though, has a different scale for determining feline weight.

The story is misheadlined: Missouri House votes to send $12 million in stimulus money to Metro because let’s just see what it is. Is it:

The House voted Wednesday to use $12 million in federal stimulus funds to soften dramatic service cuts at Metro.

The sponsor of the Metro funding amendment, Rep. Rachel Storch, D-St. Louis, said thousands of people can’t get to work since bus routes at the St. Louis-area transit agency were slashed. She also decried cuts in transportation services for the disabled.

I thought stimulus money couldn’t go to mass transit, but either I was misinformed or rules and promises out of the government are subject to change at the next member of government’s whim (logically, this is a false dilemma, as it could be both).

At least Representative Storch is clear about how unwise it is to use “one-time” stimulus payments to bridge budget deficits:

Storch portrayed it as stopgap funding until Metro can persuade area voters to raise taxes for the system.

Ah, yes. Because the voters have spoken, but they spoke wrongly and must receive chance after chance to do what the leaders want.

So what the state legislature has approved is a $12 million marketing and lobbying budget. It won’t get old bus routes running again, but it will bridge a gap in the efforts to convince people to raise their taxes.

Kind of like those nice vinyl signs on the bus stops that are out of service. Metro did not remove the bus stop signs. No, they converted them all into free billboards to tell the electorate how it done Metro wrong.

The New York Post compiled an article enumerating Obama’s mistakes in office: 100 DAYS, 100 MISTAKES.

Maybe they were premature:

After all, who knows what might be done today or tomorrow? I’d save a spot on the list to see how the president handles the 100 days of disaster protesters in Arnold, Missouri, tomorrow.

The president claimed ignorance of the Tea Parties, but these guys will be right there. Unless their freedom-to-protest zone is in Hillsboro.

Missouri Legislature tackles eating disorders.

It would be entirely consistent behavior for the legislature to merely make eating disorders against the law. That would curb the problem, much like it does with drugs, prostitution, and so on.

Maybe they’ll take the tack of smoking and merely ban purging in public places.

Instead, they’ll just compel insurance companies to cover them in a fashion the government dictates, which will cause higher insurance rates, which will then require more government intervention at the Federal level.

Note that there are Republicans co-sponsoring the bill. Funny how small government principles fail in lots of small ways. Like encouraging government intervention for just this one little problem.

Stimulus money paying Illinois bills:

More than $1 billion in federal stimulus money is winding its way toward Illinois school districts. But don’t expect any major changes in local education efforts.

Rather, the cash — approved by the U.S. Department of Education on Monday — will largely go toward paying bills the state already owes to school districts for items like transportation and special education services.

Isn’t that what taxpayers did with their stimulus checks? Instead of running out and buying consumer goods, they paid bills?

Unfortunately, at the state level, this is a real problem if states spend that one-time (hah!) windfall to pay ongoing expenses because those expenses will still be there when the funds are gone.

But it keeps state officials from having to make difficult decisions, hopefully until such time as the state officials become Federal officials, leaving a new crop of leaders to deal with the mess.