Radioactive Communist Zombies

Cross a Border, Lose a Civil Right!

Back in January, one Meredith Graves, aged 39, of Louisville, Tennessee visited the 9/11 memorial in New Yuck City. There she was overheard by a policeman making disparaging remarks about President Barack Obama.  She was arrested and faces a felony charge.  She is currently free on $2,000 bail.  Ms. Graves didn't realize that she didn't have the same civil rights, i.e., First Amendment free speech rights, in New York City as she enjoys in Tennessee.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg was unsympathetic, stating that the city's speech laws save lives and are well know.

Oh wait.  I'm sorry, I'm wrong.  It was the Second Amendment that New York City was ignoring and Ms. Graves was arrested because she was carrying a gun.

Can someone please explain to me why all cities, states, and local jurisdictions are required to respect First Amendment rights (sometimes ab absurdum) and yet states, cities, and other jurisdictions are allowed to restrict Second Amendment rights?  How can you cross a border and lose your civil right?  It's as if you go into a different state and it has Alien and Sedition laws that don't allow you to speak badly about the president.

We need one, uniform gun control law in this nation, one that respects the Second Amendment rights the people enjoy (what part of "shall not be infringed" don't you understand?).  This patchwork of differing laws is simply going to make instances like what happened to poor Ms. Graves more common.

Five Years Ago on RCZ: Barack Obama Announces!

Five years ago today on Radioactive Communist Zombies I wrote a very long piece on why I'm pro-life.  But also, this relatively unknown senator for Illinois announced he was running for president.  At the time I said:

[I]f he weren't black, he'd be more fringe than Dennis Kucinich. He's been in the Senate about a month. Before that he was a state senator. He makes Dan Quyale look like an elder statesman when he was running for Vice President.

But the American people (and lots of illegal foreign money) elected Barack Hussein Obama to be president and the rest is painful history.

I'm not the only one remember that it was five years ago that Obama announced he was running.  The RNC has an ad:

Are you better off than five years ago?

Photocopier Control

In the aftermath of the shooting involving Congresswoman Gabby Giffords when people were calling for gun control and speech control, I wrote, satirically, that we needed photocopier control (actually, I called for an outright ban of photocopiers).

Well, in the column of "be careful what you joke about" the state of California, which has bigger things to worry about, had decided that "professional photocopiers" need to be licensed by the county they live or work in.  I'm not joking.  Apparently this is an attempt to control cyberbullying.  In Orange County the license costs $188.

As those of us who support gun rights know, first comes registration, then comes control.

Now why is California registering/licensing "professional photocopiers"?  Yes, they say it's to prevent cyberbullying (not quite sure how that works).  But could it be the first step in controlling free speech in a state where the government has gone wild?  I don't know.  But it would make me very nervous if I lived in California.  And unfortunately, what happens in California often models what Democrats do in Washington State where I live.

Climate Affects Europe's Economy

The ravages of the climate have come home to roost at least for Europeans (who have tried, as we all know, to stop climate change).

Oh, wait.  I'm sorry, the problem in Europe is, according to the U.S. News and World Report, it's too cold! I thought global warming meant dire consequences because it would get, you know, hotter. But:

If there's one thing Europe doesn't need, it's more drag on economic growth.

Yet that's just what it could be getting, with a fresh dose of snow and frigid weather. The recent European cold snap has killed hundreds, closing airports and schools, cutting power to many, and even breaking a dam and causing flooding in Bulgaria. As people stay in from the cold and commerce shuts down, the cold could mean further stress on a continental economy strained by a debt crisis.

Gee, makes you wonder if all those models predicting a heating planet are correct. Or maybe it's all natural and we're in a cool-down cycle, now.

Or maybe, we just don't have enough information to devastate our economy in the name of a theory and computer models.

Government Doesn't Create Jobs Updated

Back in August I wrote a piece about how government doesn't create jobs.  It was my usual brilliant analysis and explanation of why government jobs kill private sector jobs.  At least until the end when, I don't know, maybe I was tired, but I wrote:

Government doesn't create jobs. Oh, it can hire people, but always at a cost to the economy that will result in jobs being lost. It probably isn't a one-to-one correlation. Maybe ten government jobs to one private-sector job lost. But there is a causation. Shrink the government and watch the economy flourish.

Recently (okay, Thursday) I re-read that and realized I'd made a huge error.  If my statement above is correct that you can hire 10 government workers and only kill one private sector job, then you're up nine jobs and we can tax and spend our way to prosperity. But the empirical evidence is that we cannot.

So where did I go wrong?  I didn't do the math.  Let's think about this.  Let's say you are the city manager of a small town and you want to hire a new dog catcher.  And you have to pay him a living wage or the newspaper will write articles about how mean spirited you are.  So you have to pay him $50,000 a year plus benefits which comes to $75,000 total (based on my experience in business).  Then you have to administer that job, i.e., hire someone to do the payroll, pay the payroll taxes, managed the health care benefits, etc.  Maybe that takes one person per 100 city employees.  And the dog catcher needs a supervisor so that's another person who can supervise maybe 10 people.  And the supervisor needs a supervisor (this is government after all) who can supervise another 10 people.  So we're up to 1/10th of a Full Time Equivalent (FTE) for the supervisor, and 2/100ths of an FTE for the payroll/benifit person and the supervisor's supervisor.  That's 12/100ths of an FTE.  Assuming all those people make $50,000 a year, too ($75,000 with benefits) that's $9,000.  Add that to the $75,000 to hire the dog catcher and that's $84,000 to hire one dog catcher.  And I ignored the benefits person's supervisor and their supervisor.  But let's stick with that $84,000 number.  Oh, and then there's the government money sausage factory that can't do anything cheap so you're probably up to $100,000 by the time all is said and done.

Now, let's say you're a small businessman in this town and you want to hire a laborer.  That pays $25,000 plus benefits so about $33,000.  And you have other expensises, too, like payroll clerk and supervisors so let's guess a total of $40,000.

But guess what, the city is taking $100,000 out of the local economy to pay for a dog catcher.  That means there's at least two laborers or one supervisor who won't be getting a job (I forgot to mention, you're the only business in town).

Now, that's a vast over-simplification.  But because government pays more than the private sector when benefits are included, works people less, and does less with the people they have, a government job might cost one and a half or two or maybe even more jobs in the private sector that have to be taxed to pay for them.

And that's why government job programs don't work!

Obama Drove a Muscle Car?

Someone was trying to sell a car that Barack Obama leased when he was a state senator in Illinois in 2005-2007. The car?  A 340-horsepower Chrysler 300C (yes, it's got a Hemi).  The sellers were asking for a million bucks for this car that is probably worth about, oh, $10,000 (guesstimate).

Now President Obama is doing everything he can to ensure such gas-sucking (and fun to drive) behemoths are never sold again in America.  Apparently he didn't enjoy the roar of the V-8 as the car shot forward with amazing alacraty for a large sedan.  Or as Car and Driver said:

Eight cylinders hump out the Hemi's 340 horses and 390 pound-feet of torque, the power slipped under the floor to the rear where, in full fury, it paints the road with 10-foot patches of rubber and shoves the mass to 60 mph in a torrid 5.3 seconds.

Maybe Obama is one of those unreasonably prudent drivers.  Or maybe the power scared him and that's why he hates powerful (and fun) cars.

According to Fox New, he traded it in for a Ford Escape Hybrid, probably one of the snooziest vehicles on the road.

And now he's driven around in an armored limousine.

I hope someone asks Romney if he likes to drive.  If he answers "yes" it will make me happier to vote for him, as it appears I'm going to have to.

Romney's Stupid Idea

Just when I start to get slightly comfortable with the idea of Mitt Romney being the presidential GOP nominee, he comes out and says something stupid.  No, not that he doesn't care about poor people (which was stupid to say but not stupid per se).  No, what Romney said that is economically stupid (but perhaps politically astute) was that he would like to see automatic raises in the minimum wage to match inflation.

This is asinine as we are learning in Washington State.  We have that system in place and it has resulted in the highest state minimum wage in the country at $9.04 per hour.

First of all, the minimum wage is just a bad idea.  As Thomas Sowell writes, the actual minimum wage is zero because that's what you'll be paid if you aren't capable of being worth $9.04 per hour to an employer.

I've written about this before (see here and here, for example). Any minimum wage is going to price some inexperienced workers out of the market unless it's $1 and hour, maybe.  A high minimum wage prices a lot of unskilled, inexperienced workers out of the job market.  It increases unemployment especially among the young and minorities.  It is not a compassionate thing, it is a boon to organized labor who can keep cheaper competition from pricing them out of an over-paid job.  And (not to sound like Ron Paul) where in the Constitution does it say the government can interfere with the private contracts between employers and employees?

Tying the minimum wage to inflation is like eating more the more you weigh.  it's a positive feedback loop and it will cause the minimum wage to increase and increase until youth and miniorty unemployment reach a breaking point.

This is just a bad idea, Governor Romney.  I don't know if he actually thinks this is good economic policy or he's pandering to blue collar workers and the majority of people in this country who don't understand economics.  In either case, it makes me wish someone else was going to be the GOP nominee.

Corporate Average Top Speed

I am proposing that the government develop a Corporate Average Top Speed (CATS) standard for automobiles sold in America.  Faster cars mean Americans get where they are going sooner and are therefore more productive or can spend more time doing what they want to do.  Faster cars mean less congestion as people will get off the road faster.  And faster cars are funner to drive.

I don't know what the CATS is now for each automaker but I propose doubling it by 2025.  With American ingenuity this will spur innovation and create jobs.  And it will help the environment by turning all that black yucky oil in the clean, fresh CO₂.

You prefer the good gas milage and safety of a car that can't go 200 miles per hour?  Too bad, the government has spoken.

Yes, I'm joking.  But President Obama's logic for doubling Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards is pretty much the same.  I like fast cars, he likes green cars.  So he's imposing his desire for crappy cars on everyone as I'm imposing my desire for powerful cars on everyone.  Consumer choice somehow doesn't fit into Obama's way of thinking.

So in ten years when the only cars on the lot are underpowered, overpriced pieces of crap, you'll know who to thank.

Romney's Box

Today's the Florida primary and if the polls are accurate, Mitt Romney is going to win it which could pretty much seal the deal on him winning the nomination.  And if he's our nominee, I'll support him as best I can against Barack Obama.

But here's where I see Romney has a huge problem going up against Obama: Romneycare. Romney won't (probably upon advice of his handlers) disavow Romneycare, the health care system he signed into law in Massachusetts when he was governor there.  It became the model for Obamacare, right down to the (unconstitutional) individual mandate to buy health insurance.

Since Obamacare is Romneycare writ large, all Romeny can say (and has said) is you can do at the state level what you can't do at the federal level.  All Obama has to say to defeat Romney in a debate is "why?"  Why if it's okay or even good for the citizens of Massachusetts isn't it okay or good for the whole country.  And to that I've yet to hear Romney give a coherent answer.  Because he can't.  If it's wrong for the federal government to do it, it is wrong for a state government to do it.  (Yes, I know that's not true on all matters, i.e., states should setand enforce speed limits  but not the federal government).

One of the biggest problems Obama faces is the unpopularity of Obamacare.  And Romney won't be able to use that against him because all you need to say to Romney is "Why if it's okay for Massachusettes is it not okay for the U.S.?"

But apparently that's who we're going to have for a nominee unless Newt pulls out a miracle.  Which doesn't seem likely.  And with Romney as the nominee, we might have four more years of this president who will do everything he can to turn this country into the People's Republic of Amerika.

Federal Workers Are Overpaid Says CBO

Tax season is upon us (I'm still awaiting some 1099s) but as you're making out your tax forms and calculating what you owe, I'm sure you're glad to know your tax dollars are going to over-pay federal workers.

Federal workers are overpaid?  Yes, says the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  You know, the CBO, the arbiter of all things bipartisan.  According to the CBO, if you have a high school degree you can make 36% more in wages and benefits working for Uncle Sugar.  And if you have a college education, you can make 18% more working for the government.  The only level where working for the federal government is not a good plan is if you have a doctorate or professional degree (a lot of those doctorates are probably working for universities making too much).

So why should those who's wages are paid through taxes make more than those who pay the taxes?  I don't know.  Seems something is wrong here.