Author Archives: Bok
State Dinner
The Obamas hosted a state dinner this week for the tax cutting socialist president of France, Francois Hollande. The menu featured dry aged ribeye beef, quail eggs, caviar, chocolate cake, ice cream, fudge, shortbread cookies and cotton candy.
Retractable Debt Ceiling
The House voted to retract the debt ceiling with no restrictions and the Senate approved about 5 minutes later.
Sochi Spy Swap
There will be no Sochi Spy Swap for Edward Snowden.
Senator Mark Warner wants to deport Justin Bieber to Canada. He could go to jail. Pussy Riot has already been there.
Pussy Rioters served Russian prison time for protesting President Putin’s human rights record. That and desecrating a church. In Bieber’s case it would be for assaulting his limo driver. Or for assaulting his jet pilot with second hand pot smoke.
No Sochi Spy Swap but Snowden Welcome
Putin says Edward Snowden is welcome to attend the Sochi Olympics. Pussy Riot, not so much.
I meant to include a shirtless Putin but ran out of room.
Smidgen of Corruption
Usually when a politician is asked about a particular scandal he stonewalls and says he’d love to set the record straight but he just can’t because an investigation is ongoing. In a refreshing change of pace President Obama told Bill O’Reilly there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.
George Will has said the IRS scandal should be treated like Watergate.
Lois Lerner was the head of the IRS division that grants tax exemptions to non profit groups. During a speech to the American Bar Association she arranged for a planted question so that she could account for increased scrutiny the IRS was giving to conservative groups, compared to liberal groups, seeking tax exempt status.
When asked about this by Congress Lerner pleaded the fifth.
Well, Maybe a Smidgen of Corruption
Cleta Mitchell, a respected attorney representing grass roots conservative groups, says the IRS contuse to target them to this day.
Unemployment Liberation
War is peace, freedom is slavery, and unemployment is liberation.
A new Congressional Budget Office report says ObamaCare will cost the economy 2.3 million jobs. Lower income workers will have a “disincentive to work”, as CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf put it.
“By providing subsidies that decline with rising income (and increase with falling income), and by making some people financially better off, the Affordable Care Act will create an incentive for some people to work less,” the report states.
The White House has embraced this. Jason Furman the chairman of the Council for Economic Advisers calls it freedom from “job lock”.
Unemployment Liberation Update:
University of Chicago Economist Casey Mulligan thinks that’s nuts:
I don’t know what their intentions are,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “but it looks like they’re trying to leverage the lack of economic education in their audience by making these sorts of points.
I can understand something like cigarettes and people believe that there’s too much smoking, so we put a tax on cigarettes, so people smoke less, and we say that’s a good thing. OK. But are we saying we were working too much before? Is that the new argument? I mean make up your mind. We’ve been complaining for six years now that there’s not enough work being done. . . . Even before the recession there was too little work in the economy. Now all of a sudden we wake up and say we’re glad that people are working less? We’re pursuing our dreams?
