Whatever you tax, you get less of. Democrats understand this, which is why they support carbon taxes, gasoline taxes, the Tobin tax, and other taxes on things that they would like there to be less of.
Obama himself raised the cigarette tax because he wants to reduce the rate of smoking. (more…)
Before Obamacare was passed, we critics said that its biggest parts were timed so as to not take place until after the 2012 election, and that these things would make health care more expensive. The Obama supporters laughed at us, called us racist, and said we didn’t care about people.
Now that the 2012 election is over, our predictions are coming true.
Pennsylvania voted for Obama in both elections. I live in Pennsylvania, and I still see Obama bumper stickers all over the place.
It’s too bad this news story from WTAE, Pittsburgh, doesn’t tell us which of these employees voted for Obama and which did not:
In the past week, at least 17 people in Allegheny and surrounding counties died from using heroin. Allegheny County medical examiner Karl Williams called it “a major public health crisis.”
I disagree with his claim that this is a “major public health crisis.” It’s not contagious. It’s not catchy. It’s not genetic. It is 100% completely, totally avoidable. So there is no “major public health crisis.”
This is a crisis, but it is a crisis of a very different kind. It is a crisis of bad decision making. It is a crisis of irresponsible behavior. It is a crisis of stupidity.
More than 20 years ago when I was in college, I attended a speech by Dinesh D’Souza. He said that he was born in India, and that he had moved to the U.S. because he “wanted to live in a country where the poor people are fat.” I thought that he was brilliant.
D’Souza was recently arrested for violating campaign finance laws. Politico reported:
Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and political commentator, was arrested and indicted on charges of campaign finance fraud on Thursday.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office said that D’Souza made “illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others” and “[caused] false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission in connection with those contributions.”
If these accusations are true, then there is no excuse for what D’Souza did, and I hope he feels ashamed and embarrassed over it.
So why is it that Barack Obama has not been arrested for his own alleged violations of campaign finance laws? (more…)
It was recently reported that the Obama administration was considering revoking trademark protection for the Washington Redskins’ name because some people said it was offensive.
This could set a horrible precedent.
Just about every R-rated movie includes content that someone would consider offensive, whether that content be violence, sex, profanity, etc. The same can be said for the content of many books, the lyrics of many songs, the content of many paintings, etc. If any copyright, patent, trademark, etc., can be revoked because someone finds it offensive, then I can’t even begin to imagine how much damage this would cause to the concept of intellectual property, as well as to the arts, sciences, music, literature, movies, etc.
There is no such thing as a right to not be offended. The whole point of protecting free speech in the first place is to protect speech that some people might find offensive. If we only protected speech that was dull, bland, and non-controversial, there wouldn’t be much point to having such protection in the first place.
Obama is a commie-fascist dictator, and I never use that term loosely.
Little Sisters of the Poor – now there’s a sweet name for a sweet group of ladies. Nuns, to be precise. And to be even more precise, nuns who run nursing homes for the old and the sick.
Obama doesn’t like letting these nuns practice their freedom of religion. He is threatening to fine them for violating Obamacare’s birth control mandate, and he’s taking his meddling all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Washington Post just published this article and photograph. I realize that this sounds like satire from the Onion, but it really is a real news article:
This photo of Kim Jong Un riding a ski lift is North Korea’s way of flipping off Europe
December 31, 2013
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes a solemn ski lift ride during his inspection tour at the Masik Pass ski resort, near Wonsan, North Korea.
I’ll explain. Kim is thought to have developed a love for skiing when he went to boarding school (under a fake identity) in Switzerland. One of his pet projects since taking power two years ago has been building a giant ski resort, something that does not immediately serve the world’s poorest country but would be meant as a show of national greatness. So Kim made it a top national priority to build the resort, Masik Pass, and work has been proceeding feverishly.
But Kim’s pet project hit a major snag this August: ski lifts. Kim just could not get his hands on any ski lifts. North Korea doesn’t have the technology to build its own. And the countries that make them all tend to be in the West, where new sanctions imposed in March make it illegal to sell luxury goods to the Hermit Kingdom. North Korea tried offering millions of dollars to Austrian and French companies to import ski lifts, but both said no.
Finally, North Korea tried to import from a Swiss company, offering $7.7 million for the lifts. It would be a logical choice: The country’s well-known history of neutrality at times extends even to Pyongyang. But the Swiss government blocked the deal, calling the Masik Pass resort a “propaganda project.”
Pyongyang was so angry it issued a furious response via official state outlet KCNA, declaring, “This is an intolerable mockery of the social system and the people of the DPRK and a serious human rights abuse that politicizes sports and discriminates against the Koreans.” Yes, you read that correctly: North Korea called Switzerland’s refusal to sell it ski lifts a “serious human rights abuse.”
In the four months since Switzerland blocked the sale, North Korea appears to have somehow acquired ski lifts. It’s not clear how or from where; presumably they’re confident in the lift’s safety for Kim himself to take this lonely ride up the slope. The photo is surely meant primarily to demonstrate to North Koreans that the ski resort is coming along and that the ski lifts have the leader’s confidence. But it’s hard not to also see this as Kim thumbing his nose at Europe, as if to say that he doesn’t need their stinking ski lifts anyway.
North Korean state media called the ski lift a “great monumental structure.” Kim reportedly said that the resort was “at the center of the world’s attention” (it’s a central myth of North Korean propaganda that the entire globe is rapt with admiration and wonderment at North Korea’s every ribbon-cutting) and said it would open as soon as possible.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 