Ignorant of Business, Uninterested in American Jobs

Obama has proven himself uninterested in American business and totally ill-informed about how jobs are created.  He believes that if only government spends enough money on government programs, on subsidies for a few industries chosen for their support of socialist programs in exchange for those subsidies, and vilifies businessmen before the People for not creating jobs in America, that he can create jobs.  Unfortunately, he has only created government jobs, which always create a drain on the private sector, forcing it to increase production just to compensate for that drain.  When all of their hard-earned production increase is taken by government in the form of added taxes, added time for government reports, and added efforts to abide by massive and contradictory regulations and laws, the employers of the private sector no longer have the resources to create jobs.  What is more, they have less desire to create jobs, which only adds to their personal sense of responsibility in an ever more uncertain hell managed by ever-growing, arbitrary government.

Obama hates business, except as a victim from which he can suck wealth.  He is very comfortable in his disregard for the effort it takes to run a private business.  He is careful to keep people with knowledge of business at several arms-length remove.  Presidents are listed below with the percentage of Cabinet-level positions for each headed by someone with significant business experience:

Even John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter had use for the management skills and knowledge of businessmen at rates several times that of Obama.  Obama's own cluelessness is continuously ensured by his creation of a cocoon with nary the slightest influence of real-world businessmen.  There is no danger that this inept President will ever figure out what is needed to help the American economy recover and regain the self-assurance for which it is usually well-known.  Without that self-assurance, that comes to the American businessman when he knows he resides in an intelligible world in which he can calculate probable business growth and profits, no significant numbers of private sector jobs will be created.  That is a huge human tragedy, for as I showed here, the number of missing jobs in the American economy is 20.4 million!!!!!  That is a great many degraded American lives.

I wish to thank iamnothere for directing my attention to these figures on Presidential business cabinet member experience.

Rasmussen Defines the Political Class

John Fund interviewed pollster Scott Rasmussen after he gave a speech at the American Legislative Exchange Council.  Rasmussen notes that he takes care to define whether his polled people belong to the Political Class or to the Mainstream Public.  The Political Class favors government in at least two of the following three questions:

1. Whose judgment do you trust more, that of the American people or America's political leaders?
2. Has the federal government become its own special interest group?
3. Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

My answers to these questions are:

1. The American people, unless we mean the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution.
2. The federal government is a voracious special interest group.
3. Big business is often happy to use the force of government to protect itself from competition and to harm small business.  Politicians are often happy to offer big business and labor unions plums for their contributions upon which the public is choked.

The Political Class has shrunk since the recession began hurting Americans in late 2008, while the Mainstream Public has grown slightly.  I find it puzzling that still more people have not lost their faith in government, but faith in government is a stubbornly held religion.  Strangely enough, a majority of Democrats, of Republicans, and of independents are Mainstream Public.  The Political Class believe or favor these views:

• 67% believe the U.S. is moving in the right direction.
• They overwhelmingly support the bailouts of the financial and auto industries, ObamaCare, and suing the state of Arizona on its immigration bill.

84% of the Mainstream Public believe the U.S. is moving in the wrong direction!  The Mainstream Public intensely oppose the bailouts, ObamaCare, and suing the state of Arizona.

On the Democrat congressional agenda:

• 91% of Political Class think it mainstream
• 70% of Mainstream Public think it extreme

On the Republican congressional agenda:

• 81% of the Political Class think it extreme
• 53% of Mainstream Public find it mainstream

Rasmussen points at polling questions from the Political Class that make no sense to the Mainstream Public.  An example is "Should policymakers spend more to improve the economy or reduce spending to cut the deficit?"  Rasmussen says 52% of Americans think more government spending hurts the economy, while only 28% think it helps.  Consequently, while the pollster thinks he is asking for a trade-off, the public only sees the reduction in spending as good.

The week the bailout plan passed Congress, 62% of the voters wanted more tax cuts and less government spending.  They understood from the beginning that spending bailout was unlikely to succeed in helping the economy.  When Obama told Americans that ObamaCare would reduce health care spending and cut the deficit, most Americans already knew otherwise.  60% thought it would increase the deficit and 81% thought it would be more expensive than the Congressional Budget Office numbers said it would be.  The Mainstream Public is much harder to make fools of than is the Political Class.

Rasmussen noted that the American people voted against the party in power in the last three elections.  While Republicans will gain from this in November, 75% of Republicans say the Republicans in Congress are out of touch with the party base.  Rasmussen says Republican leaders will have to move quickly after the election to convince Republicans that they have regained contact with and understanding of the party base.

Sowell: Dismantling America

Thomas Sowell has written another excellent Opinion Editorial entitled "Dismantling America" in which he discusses the fact that our Constitution has always been seen as a terrible obstacle by those elitists seeking power over the People.  In particular, he notes that the Progressives in America have been at war with it openly and that President Wilson was the first President to openly attack it.  Progressive Teddy Roosevelt also attacked it by saying that he would do whatever he felt was necessary as long as the Constitution did not tell him he could not do what he intended to do.  See p.4 of Bully Boy by Jim Powell, where he quotes from Teddy Roosevelt's autobiography, published in 1913.  This is also an attack, because the Constitution says that the government and President can only exercise a few enumerated powers and makes no comprehensive effort to tell them what they cannot do in other terms.  Teddy Roosevelt's statement is a clear attempt to circumvent the restrictions of the Constitution on his power.  While he attacked the Constitution as President prior to Wilson, I do not know how publicly he did this while still President, so Sowell may be correct in his statement.  The Progressives have steadily eroded the interpretations of the Constitution ever since those earlier days and redefined words and read the white space between lines in a mad effort to circumvent it ever since.  There is now a huge body of legal precedent for doing just that.

Here are my further comments on his commentary from the Atlasphere website:

Ben Franklin clearly recognized that the American People had to believe in and understand the Constitution if the limited government republic it set up were to continue to exist. The failures attributed by some to our Constitution are actually failures of the American People to understand and support the Constitution. With due diligence, our Constitution would be strong to this day. That diligence required that each and every generation of Americans should have been educated in our colonial, revolutionary, and later history, as well as having an appreciation for the failures of monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, and, yes, democracies throughout human history.

Allowing the Progressives to turn us from private education to public education give them all the long-term advantages in the fight to maintain legitimate government as defined in our Declaration of Independence. Legitimate government protects the equal, sovereign right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All the implied rights should have been discussed endlessly in our schools and they almost never are discussed beyond the First Amendment.

The fact that Congress has only a few powers closely delineated and most of them relate to dealings with external countries and people is not taught. These powers are further restricted by the requirement that they be exercised only in accordance with the General Welfare. The power to tax is given only to carry out the enumerated powers and is further restricted in kind. The interstate commerce clause's purpose was to free interstate trade because a man in one state has a right to trade with a man in another state. The Ninth Amendment recognizes that the federal government cannot infringe upon our many individual rights or privileges and immunities. The Tenth Amendment further protects our right to local government for such other purposes of government as we may have need. The Fourteenth Amendment protects our privileges and immunities from infringement by state and local governments. All this could have been taught in the schools, but we gave the schools away to the Progressives and to the governments from which we need protection. Government-run schools have a serious conflict-of-interest. They will distort the Constitution in order to give government the power that governments always lust for.

The crucial issue of our day is the protection of our equal, sovereign individual rights. This cannot be achieved without the private education of American children with a greatly renewed interest in history and the principles of legitimate government.

Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable

I have written many posts that our ground surface temperature record based on the collapsing network of weather stations around the world, is biased upward with the urban heat island effect and by obviously bad grid interpolation schemes.  I had thought that the only reliable temperature records were the satellite and ocean buoy temperature records.  I was wrong.  It now appears that since at least 2005, the satellite temperature records have not been reliable.

This revelation began with John O'Sullivan being informed that data on the temperatures across northern Lake Michigan which were automatically provided by satellite to a NOAA website operated by the Michigan State University had ridiculously high surface water temperatures widely distributed over the lake.  In fact, they implied many areas were under super-boiling conditions!  A commenter to O'Sullivan's website noted that the entire lake surface was coded in black, meaning that the cloud cover was too extensive for the satellite to produce meaningful temperatures.  He implied that this would keep these temperatures from being used in any other way in generating the satellite temperature record.  However, O'Sullivan came back with Lake Michigan maps which were not coded black and showed that many of the temperatures in the grid over the lake were differing too much locally and changing too rapidly in time.

This led to questions to NOAA, which generates the primary temperature records in the U.S. and supplies its raw data to NASA and the CRU at the University of East Anglia in the UK.  NOAA has not been very forthright with what is going on, but it has admitted that the NOAA-16 satellite has severe sensor problems.  Then they also admitted that other satellites have suffered degradation of their sensors.  Finally, Charles Pistis, Program Coordinator of the Michigan Sea Grant Extension admits that satellite data going back to 2005 may have been corrupted by bad data.  He instructs us that the NOAA-16 satellite uses IR sensors and provides a temperature which is either the surface temperature or the temperature at the top surface of a cloud.  The temperature of 604F found in one grid on a cloudy day is not likely to be either the temperature of the surface of Lake Michigan or of a cloud over it.

It is a wonder to me how one can use data from IR sensors to contribute to the global temperature record if the temperature measured is either that of the ground or of the top of a cloud or just total nonsense.  Let us suppose that the data is examined against independent cloud coverage measurements, which it is not clear is carefully done.  But, if it were, then all the temperature data would be shifted systematically to higher temperatures.  Ground and water areas under clouds are cooler during the day and will also be cooler at night more often than not if the day was also cloudy.  Charles Pistis has evaded the repeated question of whether the temperature measurement data from such satellites has gone into the NOAA temperature record.  This sure suggests this is an awkward question to answer.

The satellite data is fed automatically into records and apparently as long as it showed high enough temperatures to satisfy the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates, those numbers were not given careful scrutiny going back as far as 2005.  It is, of course, hard to believe that no one did notice the errors.  One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us.  Possibly, in time, NOAA will provide an adequate answer to what has been going on with the satellite temperature record, but it is off to a very bad start in reassuring those of us who are not religious environmentalists, but are just interested in an objective understanding of the environment.  But, at this time, that appears to be an unlikely outcome.

Given the taxpayer money spent on the satellite and the ground station temperature records and the great importance claimed by the catastrophic AGW alarmists for the unprecedented warming of the globe they have claimed was going on, these failures in generating an accurate satellite temperature record are unfathomable.  What is worse, the raw data is known not to be available to reconstruct the ground station temperature record and one suspects it is not available for the satellite records either.  This is a catastrophe.  It is now perfectly clear that there are no reliable worldwide temperature records and that we have little more than anecdotal information on the temperature history of the Earth.  There is clearly no basis for the claims that the Earth has warmed at unusual rates in recent times or that we know anything more than some local temperatures, mostly from urban heat effect zones.

Broader Lawsuit Filed Against ObamaCare

In addition to the lawsuits filed by Virginia and by Florida with another 19 states including Arizona, the Goldwater Institute has filed a private lawsuit against ObamaCare on a much broader basis than that of the state lawsuits which are mostly concerned about the traditional authority of the states to regulate health care.  The private lawsuit, Coons v. Geithner, makes the arguments that ObamaCare:

• exceeds the powers of Congress
• violates individual rights
• interferes with the authority of the states
• violates the separation of powers with a bureaucracy lacking sufficient Congressional direction and judicial review

The plaintiffs are Nick Coons, who owns a small business in Tempe, Arizona; U.S. Representatives from Arizona, Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, and John Shadegg; and by the Speaker of the Arizona House Kirk Adams and 28 other Arizona state legislators.  Obama, Treasury Sec.Tim Geithner, Health and Human Resources Sec. Kathleen Sibelius, and Attorney General Eric Holder are being sued.

Nick Coons will be forced to buy government approved health insurance by 2014 or face IRS fines.  He wants to continue to make his own health care decisions.  He also objects to the legislated violations of his medical privacy to an insurance company, the federal government, and others without his permission.

The three U.S. Representatives object to the lack of Congressional oversight of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will make assure that costs are controlled and will therefore ration care and care quality.  This board will also not be subject to judicial review.  Unfathomably, the law also says the board cannot be repealed except for a short window of time in 2017.  I cannot understand how a present Congress can override the intentions of a future Congress with any act other than a Constitutional amendment, which requires additional approval from the states.

The Arizona legislators claim they have been forced by the federal government to restore prior cuts they made to their state's relatively generous Medicaid benefits because the federal government had threatened to take away $7 billion in federal payments to the Arizona Medicaid program.  They say this violates their First Amendment rights to vote in the best interests of Arizona citizens.

The Obama administration is expected to request that the lawsuit be dismissed since the federal law will not be fully implemented until 2014.  U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson already rejected this argument in the state of Virginia lawsuit against the federal government.

While I am delighted that 21 states have challenged the federal government on its over-reach into an area traditionally regulated by the states, I am much more pleased with this lawsuit which seeks to directly defend our individual rights.  As I have argued repeatedly, it is impossible to make the case that we have an individual right to life and to the pursuit of happiness if ObamaCare is brought into execution.  We will not even be able to say that we own our own life.  We will not be allowed to manage our own health care to maintain our own lives.  We will not be free to help those we love to maintain their lives.  We will not be free to take medical remedies to ameliorate pain, so we will not be able to pursue our happiness in a most fundamental way.  We will not have the freedom to correct medical problems without the consent of the federal government, yet these medical problems may incapacitate us to pursue the interests and values we need to provide us with happiness.  In short, ObamaCare is a prescription all by itself for that illegitimate, tyrannical government we defined in our Declaration of Independence.  ObamaCare gives us much greater reason than our colonist forefathers had to dissolve our allegiance to that illegitimate government and to seek independence from its tyrannical grasp.  The several lawsuits and/or a supermajority in Congress capable of repealing ObamaCare are the last hope of saving our Union and our much beloved Constitution.

Miron: Government Needs to Divorce the Marriage Business

Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has made an argument similar to the one I have been making for about 5 years on the issue of gay marriage and the role of government in marriages.  To summarize his argument:

• Government should exit the marriage business.
• Private contracts for raising children, for the division of property, inheritance, and other purposes should be available as components to a bundled contract open to all couples.
• Opposite-sex and same-sex couples would have the same opportunities and be treated equivalently.
• Government would still define the default rules of a contract.

The main limitation of his argument is that he limits domestic partnership contracts to a couple.  There is no more reason for doing this than there would be to limit a small business partnership to a couple.

Democrat Unemployment Policy Rewards Immoral Mooching

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program of 2008 was initially funded by the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008.  Since then, it has been extended or expanded 7 times.  The most recent extension was on 22 July 2010.  It now consists of:

• Tier 1:  Up to 20 weeks of benefits in every state.
• Tier 2:  Up to 14 additional weeks of benefits in every state.
• Tier 3:  Up 13 additional weeks of benefits in states with a:
• 13-week insured unemployment rate of at least 4.0%; or
• 3-month seasonally adjusted total unemployment rate of at least 6.0%
• Tier 4:  Up to 6 additional weeks of benefits in states with a:
• 13-week insured unemployment rate of at least 6.0%; or 
• 3-month seasonally adjusted total unemployment rate of at least 8.5%.

Since all but 4 of the states in June 2010 had unemployment rates of 6.0% or higher, all but the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Hampshire may qualify for Tier 3 unemployment benefits.  Qualification for Tier 4 benefits is harder to get the data on, but it appears that slightly more than half the states presently qualify for Tier 4 benefits.  Thus, half the states are subsidizing the other half, as some unemployed people pick up unemployment benefits for as long as 53 weeks.  Curiously enough, people may qualify from as early as May 2006, or well before the recession, until as late as 30 November 2010, or conveniently after the upcoming elections.

What are some of the effects of such long-term unemployment benefits?  Here are a few: 

• The unemployed
• wait longer to look seriously for a new job.
• refuse to take lower paying jobs.
• continue to look for a job much like their old job.
• do not start their own business in order to create their own new job.
• do not move to states where jobs are more plentiful in general or for their job specialty.
• Employers
• cannot find as many qualified applicants as they would like for lower pay jobs.
• find their qualified applicants will not move to the job.
• cannot find people for training positions, even if post-training pay will be comparable to the unemployed person's previous employment pay.
• sell fewer goods and services because people will not buy due to the uncertainty created by high unemployment.
• have to pay higher unemployment taxes to the states due to the high unemployment, making it more expensive to hire anyone.
• generally are hit with more taxes by local, state, and federal government because their expenses are up and the tax base is depressed.
• watch the Federal Reserve print money, which will not circulate, but lurks about to create future investment hazards due to inflation.
• watch anti-business tirades, legislation, and regulations as desperate and befuddled government tries to find someone else to blame for its mistakes.
• cannot get business loans because financial companies are afraid of the unknown and there is much unknown.
• Employed taxpayers
• generally are hit with more taxes by local, state, and federal government because government expenses are up and the tax base is depressed.
• are more likely to become unemployed as higher taxes drive more businesses out of business.
• are more likely to become unemployed as desperate government scares, more heavily regulates, and burdens businesses with more paperwork, such as 1099s galore.
• are more likely to become unemployed as the recession drags on since the unemployed are not working productively and are dragging the economy down.
• suffer stagnant salaries and wages as recovery is delayed.
• watch the investments made for their retirement dwindle
• worry about the debt piled upon their children and grandchildren.
• worry about the many lost freedoms as governments meddle with and take over the private sector to give the appearance of having new ideas and responding to needs.

I am sure that I could go on and on with direful consequences of the unemployment benefit extensions, but we are all surely tired of bullets by now.  How many reasons does it take to establish that something is a bad policy after all?

It is sad to see many people, who were once productive workers, now out of work.  Very many of them lost their previous jobs through no fault of their own in this government-induced and prolonged recession.  But, there comes a time, rather quickly, when someone unemployed either finds new employment or they create their own job by starting their own business, unless they are immoral.  There are unemployment programs based upon unemployment taxes.  I do not think government has the right to impose such taxes, but they do and those taxes will support a rather brief unemployment period as the unemployed transition to new jobs.  But, presently, there is little such transitioning going on.  This is due to wrongheaded government meddling in the private sector and these extensions of unemployment benefits are one of many boneheaded actions by the government to prolong this recession.  In very many ways, the Obama administration is mimicking the Roosevelt administration in the folly, erratic, and threatening nature of its economic policies.

The Tier 3 and Tier 4 unemployment benefits are analogous to the Thompson administration in Atlas Shrugged deciding to drain the wealth of burgeoning Colorado to keep going a bit longer in what is clearly a death spiral.  Mooch off  Ellis Wyatt with his new oil fields, Nielson Motors, and Hammond Cars so the unproductive can go on a few more days even at the expense of destroying the last healthy part of the country.  This is a great way to prolong a recession which should be over by now.  This unemployment compensation makes the states with fewer anti-business policies bear the costs of supporting the larger numbers of unemployed generally found in the states with poor business policies.  It takes those companies and industries which are stronger throughout the country and makes them weaker to support those who will not take the personal responsibility of moving to where the jobs are, of taking a lower paying job, of learning a new profession, or creating their own job.  It is often said that Obama is the second coming of Carter, but he is more like the transformation of Thompson from fiction to life.

Oklahoma and Arizona Will Follow Missouri Lead Against ObamaCare

The people of Missouri recently voted on Proposition C, which would make it state law that Missouri residents could not be forced to buy individual health insurance as required by ObamaCare.  71% of the people voted for Proposition C, despite its opponents spending about five times as much to block it as was spent to promote it.  The state Medical Association actually opposed Proposition C.

Oklahomans will vote on a similar proposition since the Oklahoma legislature passed Senate Joint Resolution 59, despite the adamant opposition of the Democrat Gov. Brad Henry, an Obama ally in a state that voted 66% for Senator John McCain for President.  The state house voted 88 to 9 in favor of putting the proposition on the November ballot, with strong bipartisan support.  I have family in Oklahoma and I fully expect that Sooners will vote in an even higher percentage for a state law to make it illegal to force state residents to buy health insurance than did Missourians.

In Arizona, the Healthcare Freedom Act will be on the ballot in November.  The Taxpayer Freedom Alliance was the principal force getting this put on the ballot.  The Healthcare Freedom Act makes it illegal to force citizens to purchase health insurance using taxes or penalties.  The Mayo Clinic facilities in Arizona have stopped taking Medicare payments already.  Enthusiasm for this proposition is running high and the recent attacks on Arizona over the enforcement of immigration laws have probably made Arizonians even more inclined to thwart the federal government again.

The People of Florida would also have such an anti-ObamaCare individual health insurance mandate proposition on the November ballot, except that a Circuit Court judge appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist cut down the proposition while claiming it was "manifestly misleading."  The People will now have no way to say they object to being forced to buy health insurance acceptable to the federal government, except to vote those Representatives and Senators out of office who voted for ObamaCare.  Many, many of them will do that.

Supporters of ObamaCare justify the constitutionality of the individual insurance purchase mandate based upon these false claims:

• The Commerce Clause allows the federal government to require health insurance purchases because if someone has no insurance they will have to be treated at the expense of others anyway, which will somehow affect interstate commerce even though such insurance is purchased within one state and regulated by each state.
• The Necessary and Proper Clause of the Power to Tax allows any tax, which this is, contrary to all claims when the House and Senate passed it that the penalty for not buying individual health insurance was not a tax.
• The mandate requiring the purchase of individual health insurance approved by the government is required by the General Welfare and the federal government can do anything as long as it claims it is doing it for the sake of the General Welfare.

Each of these claims is nonsense at multiple levels.  Here is why:

• The Commerce Clause was provided in order to keep the states from interfering with free trade between the people of different states, not to give the federal government the power to interfere with the free trade of the people. Besides, this actually forces someone to buy insurance and by that act, it puts them into a commerce they would not otherwise be in.  Even then, the commerce need not even be interstate commerce.  The courts have allowed ridiculously broad interpretations of the Commerce Clause, but have agreed that some powers it has been stretched to cover were not covered.  Surely this is one of them.
• The Necessary and Proper Clause of the Tax Power only allows taxation for enumerated powers of the government in the Constitution.  This restriction has been widely abused by the federal courts already.  This power of taxation is also supposed to be restricted to actions for the General Welfare.  There are further restrictions on the type of allowed taxes in the Constitution and none of those taxes cover this penalty tax for not buying a product.
• The People have made it clear that they do not think that this ObamaCare tax and mandate to buy a product is consistent with their General Welfare.  Besides, the requirement to act consistent with the General Welfare is actually a further restriction upon the powers of government, not an enlargement.  The government is allowed only to exercise the powers enumerated for it and then only in such a manner as is consistent with the General Welfare.

Some of the People are beginning to understand these constitutional limitations of the power of the federal government.  This increased understanding is being pushed in good part by the sense of outrage against ObamaCare.  Many of the People are finally realizing that the federal government has been greatly exaggerating its powers with the help of the federal courts.  Many of them are also realizing that they need the help of the states to defend themselves against the voracious power of the federal government.  Others believe they have a right surely to managing their own healthcare and that government does not own their bodies.  Some realize that it is a farce to say an American has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but he cannot control his health to control whether he will live, he cannot control his time and effort devoted to his healthcare and body, and he is not allowed to pursue the happiness of pain and disability avoidance in his own way.

Enough understand that they do not need and do not want ObamaCare, that propositions similar to those of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arizona have or will pass overwhelmingly.  We are sure to see more such state propositions in the future, with the result of more state nullification of federal government overreach beyond its constitutional powers.

Kindle, A Public Enemy

Yes, our Progressive, Nanny State government declared Kindle a public enemy.  The Amazon reader was to be used in an experiment for some college courses as a replacement for larger, heavier, and more expensive textbooks.  Case Western Reserve University, Arizona State University, and Princeton University planned to use Kindle for a few classes last academic year, but the Justice Department threatened them with legal action.  Specifically, Thomas Perez, the head of the Civil Rights Division told them they were under investigation for violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

It turns out that the National Federation of the Blind and other activist groups have been critical of the Kindle, because its menu functions require sight.  Kindle will read books out loud, but a sighted person had to set that up.  But curiously when you ask how this affects a university course, the blind are not able to read standard textbooks either.  Go figure.  Now, it may be that many popular textbooks are on audio and a blind student can acquire the audio versions, but can't they do that anyway even if the textbook is on Kindle?  Besides, the Princeton program, for example, consisted of three courses and none of the 51 students involved were blind.

So, perhaps the National Federation of the Blind was just upset that sighted students will not have to lug around many heavy and large textbooks anymore!  This seems to be spiteful.  If the NFB wanted improvements to the Kindle to make it easier for blind people to use, the best route was to allow the Kindle a larger market.  With a larger market, Amazon can better afford to make improvements or special products for the blind.  Perhaps, the NFB, rather then trusting to the goodwill of Amazon, was preventing the use of the Kindle as a form of hostage-taking to force Amazon into making improvements in the Kindle for the benefit of the blind.  This extortion was probably what was really happening.

The Justice Department settled with the schools in early 2010 and the NFB settled with Arizona State University.  The schools agreed they would not use Kindle until all students could use them.  Amazon had previously told the NFB that it was working on text-to-speech technology for the next Kindle model menu and function keys and that is now available.  The entire affair has been a tempest in a teapot.

But, our ever intrepid Justice Department is working up a much bigger and meddlesome project.  Perez is trying to get the Internet declared a "public accommodation" under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Apparently, every website will have to have text-to-speech accommodation.  What will this do to the costs of small company websites?  No doubt, many larger companies will embrace this as a means to help eliminate the competition potential of many smaller companies.

Perhaps this will also become a way to get rid of pesky bloggers such as myself.  This blog might be forced to be accommodating to the blind.  Then again, maybe it already is and I just do not know how blind people access it.  One day, I may have to know more about this.  The government has millions working for it and many, many of them are sort of hard at work trying to give each of us millions of mandates so we will be sure to have no spare time.  We are constantly being told:  "In your copious free time, you will do this and this and this and this and this and ............................................................................................................................"

Oppose the Senate Renewable Electricity Standard

The Senate is considering the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) which will mandate an increase in wind and solar power to 15% of all electric power by 2021.  This is similar to the requirement of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House in June 2009, which was called the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA).  Utilities will be forced to make huge investments in these uneconomic means of producing electricity and users will have to pay higher rates for their electricity.  This is a regressive tax with no rational benefits.

The fools backing this bill say it will provide "clean electricity", but laws already require scrubbers to clean the real pollutants from power plants.  As we all know here, CO2 is not a pollutant.  It is great plant food.  It is not causing global warming, let alone catastrophic global warming.  Finally, forcing utilities to invest in expensive alternative energy projects simply takes money from more productive efforts and transfers it to nonsense.  The net effect is a slowdown in growth of the economy and a failure to produce as many jobs as a free economy would.

Of course, this is so foolish, it is hard to believe that many of its backers do not realize this.  It is also a great way to get the alternative energy or renewable energy companies to give a politician some very large campaign contributions.  We know of many cases in which Senators knowingly do the wrong thing to gain money.  Our money.  Our response:  Throw the bums out who back this in November, whether they are running for re-election in 2010, 2012, or 2014.  Remember them as either fools or evil people, neither of whom belong in OUR Senate.

The Massachusetts Wind Power Rip-Off

David Tuerck, chairman and professor of economics, and Jonathan Haughton, professor of economics, both at Suffolk University, have written up the story of Cape Wind Associates, which plans to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound at a cost of about $2 billion.  Cape Wind has claimed it would produce renewable energy at a savings to electricity users in New England of $25 million per year.  National Grid, which provides 40% of Massachusetts' residential power, has just bought half of the output of Cape Wind's Nantucket Sound facility at a cost of $0.21/KWhr, with a 3.5% increase each year.  Under the Massachusetts Renewable Portfolio Standard program, the state allows an extra charge of $0.06/KWhr for renewable energy generated electricity which must be paid by the user.  The conventional source electricity cost to National Grid is only $0.09/KWhr, so the normal renewable energy cost is $0.15/KWhr.  The Cape Wind cost doubles the normal additional charge for renewable energy.

Not only is there no savings of $25 million per year, but ratepayers will now have an additional charge of $82 million per year thanks to the pressure on the electric power suppliers to use more renewable energy.  If it actually were the case that it was important to use renewable energy, Canadian suppliers are happy to provide hydroelectric and wind power electricity at a cost of $0.15/KWhr, not the $0.21 of Cape Wind.  What is more, the Federal Energy Information Administration does not believe the real cost of conventional electricity will rise in the next decade, so these inflated alternative energy costs will likely remain inflated for at least that long.

Many states now have programs mandating the increased use of renewable energy for electricity generation and pass the increased costs to electricity users.  Many companies are eager to provide this uneconomic service to take advantage of the higher rates they are allowed by the states and which the citizens are forced to pay.  It is a heyday for alternative energy special interests to make money hand over foot to provide unneeded electricity.  Or to be more precise, it should be unneeded.  When the states refuse to allow the generation of electricity by conventional means, electricity users are simply forced to pay the outrageously high rates to line the pockets of uncompetitive company investors and probably their bought political hacks.  This is an abuse of power.

FCC Upset with Verizon and Google Private Agreement on Internet

The FCC has been holding closed-door talks with lobbyists to reach agreement on ways to regulate Internet traffic without making major changes to existing laws.  However, Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. reached an agreement of their own on Internet traffic rules that would allow Verizon to move some broadband traffic at higher speeds at premium prices.  This has angered the FCC, which is seeking the power to dictate how Internet providers manage traffic on the networks they have built at great expense themselves.

The FCC was under attack about the closed-door meetings as another of many violations of the Obama pledge for transparency in government.  The FCC called off these talks upon the announcement of the Verizon-Google agreement.  The FCC very much wants the power to enforce what it calls Net Neutrality, which supposedly means that all broadband traffic must be carried at the same speed at the same price.  This does not allow the investors in the broadband networks as much flexibility in pricing their services and as much opportunity to make a good return on their investments as they might have under other negotiated terms with customers.  Net Neutrality would result in slower networks, lower volume handling capabilities, and if operated through a political gateway such as the FCC, almost certain restrictions on content, probably based upon a lowest common denominator viewpoint of morality and based upon the political viewpoints of the party in power.

Some inter-company private agreements may seem inconvenient to some of us at one time or another, but that inconvenience has historically proven minor compared to the inconvenience of government regulation.  A good case in point is the regulation of the railroads because many people did not think it was "fair" for the railroads to charge less to large-volume shippers and to long-distance shippers.  Regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the railroads did much to bring on the long-term decline of the railroads.  The result was a decrease in the growth of track mileage, a slowdown as regulations increased in the rate at which freight rates had been dropping under competition, a decrease in innovation, and the growth of a few very large rail systems because the ICC did not allow existing smaller railroads to pool their resources to handle a shipper's needs with agreed upon rates over longer distances on the tracks of multiple railroads.  The long-term growth and the competitive nature of the railroads was stunted by the ICC.  This is the usual pattern for industries regulated by government.  For the moment, the Verizon-Google agreement may be a bump in the road for the FCC attempt to similarly manage the Internet.

It is also a victory for property rights, albeit momentarily.  The government does not have the right to impose duties upon property owners which require them to offer services using that property which they do not voluntarily wish to perform, as things are customarily done in the free market.  The government does not have the right to push investors and their operations managers into involuntary servitude either.  Freedom in the market place is essential so that we will have as many personal choices as possible.

Asian Droughts and Grain Production and Demand

Russian Prime Minister Putin announced that exports of Russian grain have been banned from 15 August through the remainder of the year.  China has imported 1.2 million metric tons of corn this year.  The total Chinese imports of corn from all countries in prior years has been less than 100,000 metric tons a year.  Ukraine has also canceled several contracts to deliver wheat.  Widespread drought in Russia and across the northeastern corn belt of China for the last two years has reduced their supplies.  The growing middle class in China has also developed an appetite for more pork, chicken, milk, and eggs from animals fed on corn, as well as soft drinks that use corn syrup as a sweetener.  China is expected to pass Japan to become the world's second largest economy this year.  Demand for more and better food has been growing in India, Brazil, and Russia as well.

As recently as 2003, China was a large exporter of corn, when it exported 15.2 million metric tons.  One expert believes China will import 5.8 million tons of corn in 2011 and 15 million by 2015.  Russia provided 14.5% of the world's total wheat exports in 2009-2010 according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.  Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, buying much of it from Russia in recent years.  Russia exported less than 1 million metric tons of wheat in 2000-2001, but increased that to 17.5 million metric tons in 2009-2010.  The top five wheat exporting nations in the year ending in June 2010 were:

U.S.                    23.6 million metric tons
European Union  21.0
Canada               18.5
Russia                 17.5
Australia              14.0

Wheat prices leaped upward in 2007 and have stayed higher.  The story is similar for corn, oats, barley, grain sorghum, and sugar beets.  Rice prices started going up somewhat earlier, but continued to be higher since 2007.  One of the factors that pushed prices higher in 2007 was the U.S. mandate that required the use of ethanol in gasoline be set at 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol.  This is scheduled to rise to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012.  Meanwhile, the EPA was supposed to rule this month whether the ethanol content in gasoline could be raised to 15%, but now says the tests on engines will not be completed until the end of September.  Should the required gasoline content of ethanol be increased to 15%, there will be a further upward pressure on corn and meat prices.  More wheat and other crops will be displaced as farmers grow more corn.

There is some reason to believe that demand can continue to be met in the grain market.  Average corn yields in the U.S. have doubled in the last 40 years to 165 bushels an acre.  David Fischhoff, V.P. of Technology Strategy and Development at Monsanto Co., thinks corn yield can become nearly 300 bushels an acre by 2030.  If we do that and end the foolish subsidies for ethanol production from corn, it will be much easier for the U.S. to develop a greater and more lucrative export market as the rest of the world eats more meat, eggs, milk, and grains.  Healthy farm product exports would help to ease us out of the recession and produce some of the jobs we have failed to produce for most of this last decade.

The Real Jobs Situation in July 2010

As I have noted a number of times in the course of the last year, the usual unemployment rate becomes rather meaningless in a long and deep recession.  People become discouraged and stop looking for a job, or the situation being bleak, they decide to go back to school for a degree or training, or some young people currently facing unemployment rates as high as 24.8% for 16 to 19 year olds simply do not look for their first job or do so obscurely.  I believe it makes more sense to compare the number of jobs available now to those available in a time when employment was enticing enough to induce many people to work or search for work.  In January 2000, the first month of this century, the economy was robust and 67.49% of the work age population was working or looking for work.  Only 4.04% were unemployed.  At the end of the first half of the first decade of the century, the jobs situation had worsened somewhat.  4.91% were unemployed, which does not seem too bad relative to the 4.04% five years earlier, but the situation was actually far worse than that would make it seem.  The number of jobs required for the economy to be as robust as it had been in January 2000 was in shortage by 6.98%, not 4.91%.  That situation was static through December 2007, but began to worsen again in the current recession in 2008.  The worst month of job shortage was January 2010, when we had a job shortfall of 14.41%.

So far this year, the real job situation has improved slowly.  Glacially slowly, but it is improving.  The new job statistics for July 2010 show that the unadjusted unemployment rate is 9.75%.  The adjusted rate is given as 9.5% for the second month in a row, if you have faith in the adjustments just prior to an election.  I do not, so I use the unadjusted rates.  By March, the job shortfall was 13.79% and in July it is now 12.72%.  The job shortfall is more than three times worse still than it was in January 2000 for perspective.  The shortfall is 20,418,000 jobs.  Note that the adjusted July jobs numbers imply a loss of jobs, since a greater increase in the number of jobs than occurred is generally expected in July.  Thus, the slow improvement in the actual job numbers may reverse soon as colder weather cuts back the number of outdoors jobs.  See the table below:

Way back in 2007 oil prices spiked upward and this strained economies around the world.  Contrary to the popular myth, many economies went into recession well before the U.S. economy did.  Those economies in recession coupled with the effects of the oil price spike burst our housing and credit bubble.  That bubble was inflated primarily and most enthusiastically by our Democrat Congress in 2007 and 2008, though its origins go back further by many years.  Legislation in the Clinton administration made home mortgage creditors take on riskier and riskier borrowers.  Progressive socialist groups such as ACORN threatened lawsuits against mortgage lenders who did not grant many risky mortgage loans.  Law firms, such as the one Obama and his wife worked for, managed the lawsuits brought against banks reluctant to make many risky loans.

The corrective response by the private sector this far into most recessions would have led to rapid, not glacial, improvements in the economy and in many more jobs.  We are not seeing that because the Democrat Congress and Obama are beating up the private sector with deadly laws, poisonous regulations and many more promised regulations to be created by many known to be committed socialists, and much rhetoric and prosecution aimed at making entrepreneurs and business owners look like villains.  With the huge costs of ObamaCare, EPA regulations on CO2 emissions, ethanol and other alternative energy mandates, the financial reform, the interest on government debt, the end of the Bush tax cuts, oil and gas drilling moratoriums, and the massive business uncertainty delightedly promulgated by the Democrats, businessmen cannot rationally plan investments and returns on them.  This prevents them from hiring.  So, we have a glacially slow recovery of the economy and particularly of job creation.

Nonetheless, business is doing what it can under the circumstances and has, against all odds, managed to create some jobs.  Atlas struggles on with the world weighing frightfully heavily upon his shoulders.  Despite the jeers of the many socialists, he carries on and carries them.  But, clearly he is staggering.  Usually his stride is stronger and steadier after he shakes off a recession.  As yet, it is not clear whether Atlas will slowly regain his stride or he will stumble and drop his burden.  We can help him by turning the bums out of Congress in record numbers in the November elections.

Justice Department Claims Taxing Power is Constitutionally Unlimited in Defense of ObamaCare

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson ruled in Richmond, VA on 2 August that the Virginia attorney general lawsuit claiming that ObamaCare was unconstitutional had enough merit that he would not stop it from moving to a trial in October in Richmond.  The Virginia legislature has also passed a law protecting its citizens from being forced to buy health insurance by the federal government.  Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said, "The government cannot draft an unwilling citizen into commerce just so it can regulate him under the commerce clause."  Foolishly, the state of Virginia's lawyers have conceded that the federal government has broad powers to impose a tax, but they claim it has less power to impose a penalty. 

The Justice Department claims that Congress has broad authority to regulate private decisions on health care since those decisions affect the health care system and therefore interstate commerce.  They also claim the power to tax people who refuse to join mandated programs.  In fact, they go so far as to claim that the "courts are without authority to limit the exercise of the taxing power."

Now, the Justice Department is insanely wrong on both claims it is making.  This is not to say that they will not carry the day in court, but they are clearly making two unconstitutional arguments at the core of their case. 

First, they are claiming that anyone who does not purchase a health insurance plan acceptable to the federal government is affecting the health care system because at some time they will need to use the health care system.  This in turn means it affects interstate commerce.  So, a person is to be forced to buy a particular, mandated health insurance policy or one of a few such policies so that he will be forced to affect interstate commerce.  Well, actually, this may not be true at all.  First, some people will actually die without getting health care, though we do not know who they will be.  Second, some people are so wealthy that they have no need to purchase insurance to provide for their own health needs.  It is clear that the Obama faction want to force such people to buy policies which will subsidize others with less income, but such wealthy people are not evading a personal responsibility as the Justice Department argues they are.  Third, the policy best suited to some individuals will surely be different than the government mandated policies.  Fourth, it is a novel legal claim to force people to buy a product so that they have been forced to participate in commerce they did not want to participate in.  Fifth, that commerce still may not truly be interstate commerce since health plans are to be formulated and administered state by state.

Recall that Congress voted for ObamaCare while claiming that it did not represent a tax, which was a point Obama was very insistent upon.  But now, in the face of the challenge by the state of Virginia, and a separate lawsuit by the attorney generals of 20 other states, which is coming up for a similar ruling on whether it will be allowed to proceed, the Justice Department is claiming that Congress has the authority to pass ObamaCare based on its taxing power.  In fact, it has no such power since the taxing power only exists for the purpose of exercising the strictly enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, where there is no mention of caring for the medical needs of the People.  This inconvenient fact has long been ignored, however.

The current Justice Department claim goes even further than this usual usurpation of power by Congress.  It claims that the courts have no power to limit the taxation power!  Why is this going much further?  Because the Constitution places a further restriction on what Congress can do beyond enumerating its powers.  It says that Congress must legislate in such a way that it does not harm the General Welfare.  So, if ObamaCare is not consistent with the General Welfare, then it is unconstitutional.  Some will debate whether it is or not, though most of the American People have concluded that it is harmful to them.  What cannot be debated is this:  The taxing power of Congress is limited by the General Welfare and therefore it is a serious usurpation of power by Congress and the Justice Department to claim that power is unlimited.  This is clearly the claim of megalomaniacs.  There can be no question that if Congress levels a tax of 100% of income upon any American citizen, it has fundamentally violated his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The power to tax must have limits.  It cannot be unlimited.  If Congress were not to have enough sense to recognize this, then the courts would have to step in and declare the excessive taxes unconstitutional.

Judge Hudson recognized some of these problems.  He said, "Never before has the [Constitution's] commerce clause and associated necessary and proper clause been extended this far."  Indeed, if they are extended so far, then there are no limits to the power of the federal government except the few among the many rights still protected in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment.  We can then be forced to participate in any market for any good or service and then be controlled by regulation.  We can be taxed in any way to any degree by government so that it can acquire all of our income and wealth, leaving us even homeless, without clothing, and without food.  Clearly, it is the job of the federal courts to squash these hugely inflated claims of power made by the Obama Justice Department in the name of the Democrat Congress.  Your life is at stake in this.  This is a claim of a right to tyrannical rule which King George III would not have attempted.

Now that the Justice Department has claimed that ObamaCare actually invokes taxation, let us examine the evolving size of this tax.  The Kaiser Family Foundation survey of employers in 2009 found that the average premium for employer-provided family policies was $13,375.  This is the kind of policy that ObamaCare is expected to mandate, when the bureaucrats come forth with their mandates.  This is 26% of the median household income of $52,000.  ObamaCare will provide some subsidies for incomes up to $88,000, but this is still a massive tax on many earning less than $88,000 and the subsidy cost will be shifted to everyone making more than $88,000 and fall back in increased prices for all goods and services upon those who are subsidized as well.  The new tax on a family with a household income of $88,000 will be 15.2%!

It gets worse.  The Arizona Republic said in July that "State and university employees with families can expect to see their monthly health insurance costs rise as much as 37% next year."  The reason for the increase is ObamaCare!  If this kind of severe health insurance premium increase continues into 2014 when ObamaCare requires everyone to purchase the federally mandated health insurance policies, then this tax upon the People will be the most gigantic tax ever in the history of the United States!  Obama and the Democrat Congress have foisted the highest tax increase in our history upon us in a law most Americans clearly opposed then and continue to oppose today.

Throw these tyrannical bums out of office as a matter of self-preservation!  Meanwhile, we must hope the federal courts have enough sense to declare ObamaCare unconstitutional.  It clearly is.

Pig-Headed EPA Proceeds with Power Grab

Last Thursday, the evil EPA rejected the petitions of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and nine other petitioners and announced that it intends to proceed with the development of regulations to control CO2 emissions based on claims by the UN IPCC that they are dangerous to the public health and the environment.  As regular readers of this blog know, this is a perfectly unproven claim and even a known false claim.

The court order that the EPA was following to produce an evaluation of whether man's CO2 emissions were a "public endangerment" under the Clean Air Act required it to examine the science on the issue of catastrophic man-made global warming and make a determination on public endangerment.  Instead, the EPA turned to the now discredited UN IPCC reports and used them as its authority on the science.  The UN IPCC, however, is a political body of nation states and not a scientific institution.  It is not qualified to make such a determination.  The EPA also claimed the scientific backing of the National Academy of Sciences, but that organization has never made any comprehensive assessment of the causes of global climate change, though it has made pronouncements on the issue.  The EPA thus failed to accomplish its court-chartered task.

The legislative Cap and Trade approach to taxing energy and mandating energy use reductions, has run into a roadblock due to the upcoming elections and its lack of support from the People in these difficult recessionary times.  The EPA will now proceed with draconian regulations on CO2 emissions which will not in fact be compatible with the Clean Air Act.  If the courts refuse to recognize the violation of the Clean Air Act and the implied usurpation of power from Congress by the EPA, then the 2011 Congress will have to defund the EPA so it is unable to enforce whatever regulations on CO2 emissions it produces.  Obama and a Democrat Senate will not be able to prevent this defunding of the EPA.  If this is not done, the EPA regulations will greatly extend the recession.  In fact, coupled with the end of the Bush tax cuts, the moratorium on deep water drilling, and ObamaCare costs, these anti-CO2 emissions regulations may convert the recession into a depression.  Even before the regulations are in hand, the uncertainty of their effects will slow down any possible recovery and any hiring.

Uncertainty is the chief enemy of business.  Uncertainty is a form of lawlessness in and of itself.  It was never just the destruction that Attila the Hun did when he swept through a village, but it was the uncertainty caused by the fact that he might do so, which made life nasty and brutish in Eastern Europe during his time.  Obama and his Democrat followers, socialists all, are the Hun hordes of our day.

My apologies to pigs.  It is the nature of pigs, who are rather intelligent animals, to be pig-headed.  It is supposed to be the nature of man to use his superior rational faculty.  The EPA's failure to do so, should not cast aspersions upon useful pigs.  I love that kind of pork, even as I loathe Congressional pork.  A useful animal should be given a measure of respect, even as a wrongheaded, and destructive, EPA gains only our disdain.