North Carolina is broke. Ba-Roe-K.
Hear it people. We have no more money and things are gonna have to change. And one of those things is that people who used to have the State pay for things are now going to have to pay for those things themselves!
Some will say that this is a pay cut, but I disagree. It’s not a pay cut. After all, it can’t be a pay cut if you didn’t count it as pay to begin with!
Posted in Education, Health Care, Politics: North Carolina, Uncategorized
Tagged Bev Purdue, Insurance, North Carolina, North Carolina Politics
I write part time -Trying to write full time- over at The Constitution Club. I’m cross posting this here:
I’m gonna be upfront here. Don’t read this if you are faint of heart or can’t handle true things. There are gonna be things called facts strewn about and they may hurt.
I’m just sayin’.
I remember awhile back tellin’ my wife that I thought she was one of the reasons that our education system isn’t doing as well as we would like.
She looked at me and asked “Why?”
I said, “Because you are a woman.”
I had to walk home, but I have my reasons.
There is an organization that measures such things. And, in fact, they place a dollar value to those brands as well. Anyway, the latest list is out and the winner is:
Apple
In a study released Monday by Millward Brown, a market-research arm of London advertising giant WPP, Apple AAPL +0.50% was listed as the world’s most valuable brand, with an estimated value of more than $153 billion.
And how do they determine this list?
…calculations are based on an analysis of financial data combined with “consumer measures of brand equity.”
They use how well consumers feel they are served by the corporation.
In so far as companies are “greedy” and “capitalists”, they can’t succeed unless they build and sell something that people want. And the most successful of those corporations are exactly those corporations that do the best job at making the best products.
We all wanna compare; we wanna know. How is one team vs. another? How am I compared to my peers? So, it’s only natural that we do the same thing for the economy and how we’re managing our way out of it.
So. How is Mr. Obama doing?
Well, let’s look.
Posted in Economics, Economy, Government, Liberty, Politics: National
Tagged Barack Obama, Dan Mitchell, Free Market, George Bush, Politics, Recession, Regulation, Ronald Reagan
Looming Layoffs at Schools Imperil Bloomberg’s Legacy
In proposing to lay off 4,100 teachers, Mr. Bloomberg turned a political third rail into fair game. He is taking on the teachers’ union amid an incendiary national debate over the impact of public employees’ benefits and protections on state and local governments.
If by “Imperil” you mean:
Generates a ton of respect for doing the hard work that must be done in order to ensure that the New York City School System doesn’t absolutely fail every single one of it’s students by reducing a bloated unionized work force.
The yeah. Imperils is spot on!
Posted in Education, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National
Tagged Leftist, Michael Bloomberg, New York, Unions
I think that taking a suspected criminal into custody and slamming his fingers in th desk drawer to find out who the murderer is is okay.
I think that keeping a suspected terrorist awake for 48 hours in order to get him to tell me where the other terrorists are is is okay to.
The Left doesn’t.
Whatever.
The latest fabrication of the Left is Rumsfeld and his “view” that enhanced interrogation methods don’t work.
Let’s see what he says:
Sounds like Rumsfeld is clear.
“Unquestionably it works … It produced an enormous amount of very very valuable intelligence information.”
I’m not sayin’ – I’m just sayin’
Posted in Diplomacy, Government, Politics: International, Politics: National, War
Tagged Donald Rumsfeld, Gitmo, Osama Bin Laden, Torture, Waterboarding
I like going to the YMCA to work out. Mostly I like going to the tavern after I work out for a beer. But this is my story so we’ll just go with the whole YMCA thing.
In recent months, the YMCA has shifted the way it market’s itself. They’re moving away from the “YMCA” towards a more general “The Y”.
Meh.
Who cares?
Then I saw this:
Interesting, huh? Even catchy.
Ramblin’ Rose Triathalon.
Now look closer:
Pure awesomeness!
The YMCA, in an effort to be more gender neutral, has a “Women Only” event.
Freakin’ Leftists 😉
I am Christian.
I am Libertarian.
I believe that human life is entitled to Divine Liberty. Or, for the non-believers, Natural Liberty.
But I don’t know that I can say life begins at conception.
So, this past weekend my wife informed me that we were going to buy a new washer and dryer.
Fine.
Then she told me that she would appreciate it if I conducted some research and came up with a make and model before we went to the store.
Fine.
The entirety of my research was this:
google.com
“Do front load washers work”
When I found out that the stink and break, I went to step 2:
consumerreports.com
“Top Load Washers”
Sort – Price
I found the top rated set in the price range I wanted. I looked to make sure there was more than a dozen reviews.
Then I wrote it down on my paper.
Total time invested – 7 minutes.
Confidence – High.
My point is that there aren’t any written rules that document how a manufacturer should create a well made and quality machine. Rather, they have to answer to the market. It is CRITICAL to these folks that they are rated high in Consumer Reports. If they aren’t rated well, I don’t buy.
And neither do you.
Why that wouldn’t work for milk is beyond me.
Posted in Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics: National
Tagged Consumer Reports, Politics, Regulation