Heard this morning on 106.1 WRDU that the guy who shoot up a local grocery store, then took his own life, was a member of the Occupy Raleigh movement.
Members of the Tea Party:
These are not the 99% folks, they just aren’t.
Posted in Idiots on Parade, Liberty, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National
Tagged 99%, Tariq Taylor
Suppose I’m a hiring manager. And I’m interviewing for an open position. Can I legitimately use the fact that one of the candidates showed up for the interview in his pajamas as a reason not to consider him for employment?
How about if one of the candidates pulls out a cigarette and lights up. How about that? Can I use that fact to disqualify a candidate?
So, if I can discriminate against jammy wearing smokers, why can’t I discriminate against people who won’t go and get a job?
Unbelievable.
If the Occupy crowd wants to know why they are graduating with mountains of debt and no viable job options to pay it down, they have to look no further than their own existence:
Occupy Wall Street is becoming a teachable moment for New York City college students.
New York University plans to offer two classes next semester on the protest movement, whose participants frequently marched and rallied around the school’s Greenwich Village campus this fall.
The for-credit undergraduate class, offered through the university’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, examines economy and culture. The class has a rotating focus, and for the coming semester, it will be called “Why Occupy Wall Street? The History and Politics of Debt and Finance.”
I bet employers all over the nation are looking to hire kids with THAT on their resume.
Posted in Fun, Idiots on Parade, Liberty, Rocket Surgery
Tagged New York University, NYU, Occupy Wall Street, OWS
We all know that if you buy goods on Amazon you get to avoid state sales tax. Buy your whole Christmas on line and you might be able to save a hundred bucks. Maybe two.
Should states be able to reach out to those online retailers and tax them as if they were selling goods in state:
Garner, N.C. — A group of North Carolina citizens is lobbying Congress to require companies not based in the state who sell online to start charge state sales tax.
The Alliance for Main Street Fairness, which has branches in several states, said not all companies are doing so, which creates a less even playing field for local businesses.
“People come into the store. They look at the appliances. They go online. They find it cheaper. The cheaper is (because) they’re saving $70, $80, $100 on sales tax,” Alliance for Main Street Fairness spokesman Christopher Dean said Sunday.
The issue affects businesses like Garner TV and Appliance, which doesn’t have an online store.
“It’s a huge, huge impact on our business that we worry about every day and what we can do to stop it,” the company’s Vice President of Operations, Randy Pleasant, said.
I guess it depends upon how you look at it.
If the state is simply saying that we want to generate revenue on goods sold, then yeah, online sales should be taxed. On the other hand, you could argue that sales tax is meant to pay for infrastructure that isn’t being consumed by out of state businesses.
Either way, state governments would be wise NOT to use the sales tax as a means of “even the playing field” for business. THAT is most certainly not the role of government.
Posted in Government, Liberty, Politics: National
The latest report from the OECD should make those in favor of redistributive policies vindicated in their opinion that the income disparity is growing. Data suggests that it is:
THE gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider in wealthy countries over the past three decades. A new report by the OECD has reams of data on this phenomenon and is well worth looking at. The Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality in which zero corresponds to everyone having the same income and one means the richest person has all the income, increased by almost 10% from 0.29 in 1985 to 0.32 in 2008, for working-age people in OECD countries. The trend is caused by earnings: the pay of the richest 10% of employees has increased at a far greater rate than that of the poorest 10% of employees. Within the upper echelons, the top 1% have reaped the greatest gains.
I have ideas about why this gap is growing. I think that much of it is the way in which they measure the Gini. For example, you could take 4 people with incomes described as:
The Gini coefficient for the above data is .24162
Now, marry two of those wage earners:
The Gini coefficient for THAT data is .301676. Without ANY income changing at all, the Gini increases by 25%. In other words, the same number of people are working the same number of jobs and earning the same number of dollars. The only difference is the method by which they calculate the Gini.
But are there other reasons for the Gini to increase? Why yes:
Technology has disproportionately benefited high-earning workers, who also spend far longer at work than do low-earners. High earners marry other high earners. And governments are doing less to redistribute wealth than they have done in the past. So far, so familiar. But the report also argues that globalisation is not a significant cause of inequality, and that one of the many reasons for the rise in income inequality is that more people are in work now (or at least they were before the financial crisis hit) compared with the 1970s.
So, we have factors such as:
In the end, I’m not sure that the use of the Gini is an appropriate measure of income disparity. Further, I’m not sure it even matters.
I got this from Occupy Raleigh’s Facebook page.
Very refreshing to see some semblance of non-partisan content.
Posted in Government, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National
Tagged Goldman Sachs, Occupy Raleigh
If we erect government to resolve disputes, protect from fraud and safeguard Liberty, where do we get the idea that we need to redistribute wealth?
Why do we tax from some and give to others?
So, it occurred to me.
We do not trust young women to choose to purchase a morning after pill but we do trust them to have an abortion?
#Don’tFollowTheLogic
So, two months ago local talk radio show hosts were taking phone calls on their show. The guys at Brad and Britt are Liberal. I don’t think that they’d object to being described as left of center. Anyway, they took this call from a listener and it turned out he subscribed to the more conservative point of view. Britt, clearly having taken the opposite point of view went into his “Little Rush” imitation. This is where he puts on Rush’s radio bumper music and does a fantastic impression of Rush. By itself, Little Rush is hilarious and spot on, using it to yell over an earnest caller is obnoxious.
I called him out:
Keepin’ it real.@bradandbritt losing the debate again. Catch it live at fmtalk1011.com #LittleRush
— pino (@pinotarheelred) October 11, 2011
That Tweet got me “blocked”.
Meanwhile, Britt feels it’s totally appropriate to call out Neil Boortz in a much less polite tweet:
And now @talkmaster says @barackobama is as bent on destroying the USA as the Japanese were 70 yrs ago. He’s so full of shit it ain’t funny
— Britt Whitmire (@brittwhitmire) December 7, 2011
This is how the Left rolls. Free speech for me, censorship for thee.
UPDATE:
It would appear that The TalkMaster blocked Britt months ago:
@pinotarheelred you might want to amend your blog to include that @talkmaster blocked me months ago #nicetrypenis
— Britt Whitmire (@brittwhitmire) December 7, 2011
Not sure that this makes any difference what-so-ever, but Britt felt it was important to include.
Done.
Posted in Fun, Idiots on Parade, Liberty, Life, Politics: National
Tagged Brad and Britt, Neil Boortz