About Me

Name: Always To The...
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Blog Roll

Hmm. Looks Like He Was Right

BEA: Still no recession


The Bureau of Economic Analysis produced its second-quarter report, and it will surprise a few of the doom-and-gloom crowd. While certainly not spectacular, it shows that the economy continues to grow, improving on a weak first quarter to bounce up to 1.9% growth. The revised forecast for 2007’s final quarter reveals a retreat

The BEA will issue its final look at Q2 at the end of August.  They revised 2007Q4 downwards, showing it as the first quarter of negative GDP movement in at least four years.  The GDP had previously been rated as a positive 0.6%, but now has been calculated at -0.2%.  Overall GDP growth in 2007 went down a full point from 4.8% to 3.8%, still healthy but not as robust as earlier thought.

It might behoove Republicans, including McCain, to remind voters that issuing hyperbolic, unrealistic statements about the American economy intends to panic Americans into bad policy.  The economy does not need a lot of top-down management, and in fact a great deal of what ails us now originates in government meddling, such as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and mandates on lending practices.

Whatever else this economy might be, it’s not a recession, and it’s improving.



Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Plants Need To Sub Natgas With Nuclear

If ever there was a question about the need for nuclear power, it has certainly been dispelled now with the rising cost of fossil fuels.

Read Full Article

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

A GE Or Google In Your Garage? Consumer Is Game If Gas Stays Up

The media have been sounding the death knell for Detroit's Big Three, and who can blame them? General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are struggling to cope with the lowest sales in decades amid rising gas prices and collapse of the SUV market.

Read Full Article

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Detroit — More Proof That We’re Reliving The 1970s. . . .

High gas prices, tightening efficiency standards — and now an auto-industry bailout? We’ve been down this road before. That ’70s Show
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

The Paycheck Fairness Act

Congress could throw sands into the wheels of our economic machine this week.Feminists Meddle with the Market

Yet a statistic that simply compares the wages of the median full-time working man and the full-time working woman tells us nothing about the existence (or lack thereof) of systematic wage discrimination. Many factors contribute to how much one earns, from occupation and area of specialty to education and years of experience. Not surprisingly, once those factors are taken into account, the wage gap shrinks.

Men tend to take jobs that are dirtier, more dangerous, and distasteful than those performed by women. Overwhelmingly, men are the ones working in our sewers, guarding our prisons, laying concrete in the scorching sun, and catching and gutting our fish. They work more graveyard shifts and longer hours, in fact, the Department of Labor estimates that even full-time working women spend about a half an hour less each day on the job than men do. Women disproportionately work indoors, in safe, climate controlled buildings, with regular, or even flexible, hours. More people are interested in working in libraries and school buildings than on the fishing boats featured in Deadliest Catch, which is why physically strenuous, dangerous jobs pay higher salaries.

They’ve long championed policies, dubbed as “comparable worth,” that would give government officials the power to supersede the market to make sure that women’s contributions aren’t undervalued. The Paycheck Fairness Act takes steps in that direction. The Department of Labor would issue “guidelines” that compare the wages of different jobs to give employers a sense of what is considered “fair.” The guidelines may not have the force of law (yet) but certainly would be a powerful specter hanging over employers seeking to avoid costly litigation.

And employers would have additional reason to fear that they would be targets for litigation if the Paycheck Fairness Act becomes law. This bill would subject employers to unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, even for unintentional pay disparities, creating potential paydays certain to inspire trail lawyers to action. The bill would also strip employers of the ability to defend differences in pay as based on factors other than sex, such as experience and performance, leaving courts to dictate what constitutes a legitimate pay structure.

Of course, no congressional legislation would complete without a healthy serving of waste, and the Paycheck Fairness Act doesn’t disappoint. It would create a new grant program to instruct women on salary negotiation tactics and require the Department of Labor to train employers in strategies for eliminating pay disparities. It seems almost quaint to ask, but where in the Constitution is Congress granted the power to engage in this type of activity? Taxpayers should be outraged that their money is being put to such use.

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

“Transformative.”

ABC: McCain “now seriously considering” Lieberman for VP


Good news for that unpredictable five percent in the middle he needs to win, not so good for, er, everyone else in America. Are evangelicals going to vote for a guy who scored 100% on NARAL’s annual report card? Are Reagan conservatives jittery about McCain’s maverickiness going to feel reassured knowing Al Gore’s choice for VP is waiting in the wings? Is the left going to reach hitherto unscaled heights of apoplexy at the thought of the one pol they hate more than George Bush somehow ending up on the Republican ticket? (No, no, and yes, respectively, if you’re scoring at home.) Think of it in practical terms. Assume the worst happens and through some misfortune Vice President Lieberman becomes President Lieberman. Either the Democrats’ animus towards him results in hopeless gridlock in Congress or the breach is healed and we’ve got a lefty executive working with a lefty legislature towards common goals — Iraq excepted, of course. I like Liebs; I don’t like the idea. But the signs are there if you’re willing to look…

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Business As Usual

Shocker: Obama takes lobbyist money

As I’ve written before, this is really a tiresome and pointless exercise.  Lobbyists represent Americans on policy matters, and unless they’re conducting bribery, it’s a Constitutional exercise.  The issue isn’t lobbyists but the expansive amount of spoils that they can grab at the federal level. If a candidate wants to reduce the influence lobbyists have, they would enact policies that shrink the reach and cost of federal government. Barack Obama’s policies do exactly the opposite, expanding government control and spending, increasing the spoils for lobbyists given to them by elected representatives.

It’s easy.  Cut spending, reduce the size of government, and we can get rid of the corrupting influence that some lobbying brings.  In fact, if Obama wanted to keep lobbyists from supporting his campaign, that’s exactly how he could best do it — and that would be a voluntary system with which lobbyists would certainly comply.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

How Soon They Forget

“General Betray-Us” newspaper scolds on negative campaigning


Look who’s turned into a scold on “low-road” campaigning!  Why’s it’s the New York Times, the same newspaper who ran an ad calling an American military commander a traitor, initially at a substantial discount to its client organization, MoveOn.  Today, though, they cluck their tongues at John McCain — for hitting back

Well, Barack Obama wanted to retreat out of Iraq regardless of the consequences, and has not changed his policy despite the enormous transformation in Iraq over the last eighteen months.  Offering redistributionist tax and spending policies certainly puts Obama in the soft, European model of socialism, as does his repeated calls for the government to deliver (and determine) “economic justice”.   And Obama did indeed cancel his visit to Landstuhl and the wounded soldiers there, offering excuses that even the Gray Lady doesn’t really buy.

Does the New York Times editorial board read their own paper?

Besides, nowhere in this editorial filled with vituperation and unsupported innuendo about Karl Rove and his associates do the editors mention which campaign went negative first.  Hint: It wasn’t McCain

And let’s not forget the New York Times own low standard for smears

This hyperbole about negative advertising is nothing more than the Times worrying about how effective it will be against Obama.  Candidates can and should draw comparisons and contrasts between their positions and that of their opponents, as well as highlight their records.  Obama did nothing wrong in running this ad except for the sanctimoniousness of his pledge to avoid it and the hypocritical way he reversed himself.

The Times wants to shame McCain into leaving poor Barack Obama alone.  If Obama didn’t want to face negative campaign ads, then he shouldn’t have run his own.  If the Times wanted to set itself as the advertising police, then they shouldn’t have run this atrocious smear of an honorable American commander in the middle of a war.  The Times are the worst hypocrites on this issue, and their distorted, venal, and essentially idiotic editorial today proves it.



Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Stop Obama

Barack Obama's arrogance begins to grate on some of his disciples in the Drive-By Media. The guy is acting like he's already president, and going around ripping the US to win praise from liberals here and in Europe.

Dana Milbank: President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour

Jake Tapper: What Did Obama Tell House Democrats About His Symbolism?

Barry backs Obama, because... Well, he doesn't really know. He says Obama will raise taxes on The Rich, and that it won't cost jobs because everyone is already out of work. Obama has followers, not supporters, folks.

Investor's Business Daily: Obama's Global Tax || The Audacity of Socialism

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Wealthy Pay Far More Than Their Fair Share Of Income Taxes

CBS Relays Obama-Backer Buffett's Specious Claim Rich Under-Taxed


. . . wealthy increasingly pay far more than their fair share of income taxes.

The Tax Foundation reported on July 18 that new 2006 IRS tax data revealed “both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns,” those earning $388,806 or more, “and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs.” Gerald Prante pointed out those top 1 percent “paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.” The top 5 percent, those making $153,542 or more, earned 36 percent of all the reported income, but they paid just over 60 percent of the total income taxes collected.



Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Obama Notes ‘Tragic’ US Past

Er, did Obama just endorse reparations?

"I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."

Update: Obama did not endorse reparations

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: When it comes to reparations, would you take it a step further, in terms of apologizing for slavery or offering reparations to various groups?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: You know, I have said in the past, and I’ll repeat again, that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed. And I think that strategies that invest in lifting people out of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but that have brought applicability and allow us to build coalitions to actually get these things done, that, I think, is the best strategy.

Not to mention a strategy that Obama believes will cost billions of dollars and involve universal healthcare.  But it apparently will not involve reparations, which is a point worth clarifying.






Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Junk

Lonely voice of dissent declared valid - There is something odd about the ferocious amount of energy expended suppressing any dissent from orthodoxy on climate change. After all, the climate cataclysmists have won the war of public opinion - for now, at least - with polls, business, media and Government enthusiastically on board.

So, if their case is so good, why try so fervently to extinguish other points of view? There is a disturbingly religious zeal in the attempts to silence critics and portray them as the moral equivalent of holocaust deniers. (Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald)
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

What Should The House Apologize For?

Michelle Malkin  •  July 29, 2008 11:43 AM

Talk about warped priorities. The do-nothing/14 percent approval-rated Congress, led by Nancy the Navigator Pelosi, refuses to allow debate on drilling; the appropriations bills are in limbo, and judicial vacancies abound.

But hey, they’ve found time to take action on that all-important apology for slavery and Jim Crow laws

Next stop: Reparations!

What a sorry lot.

The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendents of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive