Month: April 2011

Columnist wants to eat rich people

Rich people’s money is for giving away, especially in taxes, says this fellow, a syndicated columnist — “The American ruling class is failing us — and itself” — without even a nod to the power his ilk has about what happens.

Whole column is a paean to rich people’s altruism — he fails to mention Carnegie and the libraries — as if editors and columnists of a certain stripe were not at least equally the whip-crackers.  Not to mention rich people who own newspapers etc.

Also as if capital invested in money-making (i.e. job-producing, economy-enrichment) schemes weren’t our (economic) salvation.

The column is a rumination but manages to slip this in while discussing shrinking tax rates for the rich: “And you wonder where the deficit came from.”

I wonder where the chutzpah comes from.

(Eat the Rich is PJ O’Rourke’s book, FYI.)

Our irritated president

President Barack Obama Honors Teachers (201001...
Do not mess with me.

This Obama is not the one we elected:

The Barack Obama we’ve been seeing lately is a different personality than the one that made a miracle run to the White House in 2008.

Obama.2008 was engaging, patient, open, optimistic and a self-identified conciliator.

Obama.2011 has been something else — testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and increasingly a divider.

Look, annoy Cocky Locky and you get his dander up. Lese majeste and all that. It goes with the autocratic territory.

Deficits blues explained

When you put it that way . . .

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”

Which means the incumbent Chief Spender is a tax-hiker, among many others.  Or so says Rep. Ron Paul.

Oak Park item: Mary Anne Brown a lady

The RC Knights of the Holy Sepulchre are in Chi this year for initiation of new members. 

This year’s Investiture Mass will take place at Holy Name Cathedral on Sunday, September 18 and will be celebrated by our Grand Prior, Francis Cardinal George, KGCHS.

And Oak Park’s own Mary Anne Brown, head lady at Hephzibah Home, and her husband Max are heading up arrangements.

Your hosts Sir Max and Lady Mary Anne Brown are working with many of your fellow knights and ladies to make this a truly memorable event. . . .  If you have any questions feel free to email Max at dr.tort@comcast.net.

May our Lady of Palestine bless you.

— Charles H. Foos, KC*HS, Lieutenant

The knights are a 900–year-old fraternal and benevolent organization that raises money for the church in the Holy Land:

This past year, members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem sent almost €8 million ($10.7 million) in donations to the Holy Land.

Cardinal John Foley, grand master of the order, reported this Saturday in London at a lieutenancy meeting regarding the projects the organization is supporting.

He noted the commitment of the order “to the continued existence of a Christian presence in the Holy Land, defined as Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Cyprus.”

Part of this funding went to support Benedict XVI’s visit to Cyprus earlier this year, and another is going to help in the construction of a Latin Catholic church in Aqaba, Jordan.

Members are nominated by the local bishop, in this case Cardinal George.

What’s a meta baby? Nothin’, baby, what’s . . .

In an email alert, Chicago News Cooperative supplies this summary while linking to Crain’s Chi Business story about Chi Trib editor finding life after newspapering:

Back in the Game: Former Trib editor and CNC board member Ann Marie Lipinski returns to journalism as director of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation.

Eh???  Back in a sense, yes.  But in meta-journalism, which is to journalism what metaphysics is to physics, right?

Doing what seemed a good idea at the time

Roger Pilon of Cato Institute on the death of principle in American governmental life:

“Unfortunately, over the course of this century Congress has largely ignored the constitutional limits on its power. And the courts, especially after Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court with six additional members, have only abetted the resulting growth of government by fashioning constitutional doctrines that have no basis whatever in the Constitution. As a consequence, many of the programs Congress oversees today are without constitutional foundation, having resulted from acts that Congress had no authority.

Not that principled behavior hasn’t been the exception in human history.  But still . . .

Fannie & Freddie, we wish we never knew ye

Fannie & Freddie, alleged progressivism that left the rails and would take us all with them.

On Monday, Standard & Poor’s placed the U.S. AAA-rating on negative outlook. It cited the potential cost of the U.S. government’s conservatorship of the mortgage-finance giants in tilting the scales in its decision.  Here’s what S&P said:

We estimate that it could cost the U.S. government as much as 3.5% of GDP to appropriately capitalize and relaunch Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two financial institutions now under federal control, in addition to the 1% of GDP already invested.

That’s Wall St. Journal as linked by News Alert, which demonstrates one of the best noses for news around.

 

Or did the president do it?

The President’s open hostility to [Paul Ryan’s] adult plan [in his speech last week] while offering no substantive plan of his own was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And because Mr. Obama still cannot deal with the issue as an adult, we will keep heading down this treacherous road.

Bill Daley’s really making a difference, isn’t he?

As James Pethokoukis noted, Obama’s muddled plan to solve the crisis was “fastened together by the chewing gum and sticky tape of rosy economic assumptions and fiscal opacity.” But more so, it was Barack Obama’s angry words and denunciation of Paul Ryan’s own plan that drove S&P to its conclusion.

Who said Daley would be a moderating, business-friendly influence?  Where’s the evidence of that?

 

He’s turning out an eminence gris.

Another like this union man around?

Albert Shanker was a teachers union president (American Fed of Teachers) with a head on his shoulders and an analytical mind. 

For instance, this:

“It is time to admit that public education operates like a planned
economy. It’s a bureaucratic system where everybody’s role is spelled
out in advance, and there are few incentives for innovation and
productivity. It’s not a surprise when a school system doesn’t improve.
It more resembles a Communist economy than our own market economy.”

He said that in Wall St. Journal in 1989.