Sleepless in Midland

Fox Friday 2-28-14 -- black cat photobomb

The nightly fox bait has consisted of a single raw frozen chicken drumstick. But there is the dilemma of how to lure the fox but not the cats, because so far the feral cats usually out fox the fox and get to the food first. The Fox Cam has been capturing lots and lots of cat photos and occasionally a fox photo. Fortunately for us, the fox comes back once or twice a week to check the area.

There were so many cat photos I may as well show some.  (Clidk on the thumbnail for the big picture.) This set looks like the cat was positioning for the camera.

The cat finds the drumstick in an awkward location in relation to the camera. So he moves it such that the camera gets a frontal. What a camera hog.

A couple of nights later the star attraction finally showed up.

He arrives on the scene, scans the area, then sniffs the ground. No food tonight. Damn cats. What we need is a "No cats allowed" sign.

Is that all the police mischief they could find?

Last week two days in a row the morning paper had front page headlines about police malfeasance they learned about through their open records requests.

The state gives sworn officers a tremendous amount of power over citizens, and we rightly hold them to the highest standard. For that the morning paper here in Midland, Texas,  is doing its job.

But the worst police officer offense they uncovered was the confiscation of panhandlers' signs and not turning them into the evidence room. The citizens were left thinking: "If that's all they could find, the cops must be pretty well behaved." No beatings, no blatant abuse of authority, just confiscation of panhandler signs.

The TV news picked up on it and ran it as news. See channel 9 and channel 7 where both use the word "homeless" without any indication they inquired as to the panhandlers' living quarters.

Now it's true that with sky high home prices and hotel room shortages there could be quite a few residents living in a van down by the river. But equating panhandling with homelessness is an assumption that may not be accurate.

In fact, there are rumors about people who do it because they make more money than they would at a job. It makes sense, especially if the individual is on public assistance that would vanish if he/she were officially employed.

There was also apparently one police officer who kept a set of brass knuckles for himself. That's not too good, but the Internal Affairs office dispensed its own punishment to the officer. And best of all, the other officers weren't afraid to report misdeeds they observed in the department.

In any case, it looks like we've got a pretty good police department. If you don't believe me, just ask the oil companies that are hiring away the experienced officers.

Dems cultivate women's victimhood

Democrats plan to recycle that mythical war-on-women for the next campaign season. That's according to Politico. See Democrats resurrect War on Women messaging.

It is a myth that will take some truth bending to make it believable. But that never stopped them before. Unfortunately, it requires women to see themselves a victims, and it just goes to show that the self-esteem movement that we hear the schools have pushed on students was a useless gesture. If women need some lessons on self esteem they need to look at women who have really been victimized and who persevered. Sarah Palin comes to mind.

Then there's the myth about pay inequality with men. Excerpt from Politico:

The DCCC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are preparing to mount efforts focused on pay equity as the centerpiece of a larger economic argument targeting women.

The only way to find pay inequity is to compare the paychecks of large groups of women with large groups of men without regard to the type of work, skill requirement, hours worked, physical risk, or how dirty the worker gets. If there is any woman doing the same work as a man but getting paid less she should see a lawyer. There have been laws against that sort of discrimination for decades. In fact there's a taxpayer funded federal bureaucracy in place to do all the work.

Unfortunately, the truth is the real victim here.

Morning paper discovers open records requests -- so how about looking into that skyscraper project

The other day the Midland Reporter Telegram was patting itself on the back for doing some investigative work in the form of open records requests aimed at our local government.

While it's tempting to say, "better late than never," we won't go there. Instead let's congratulate them and encourage them to keep it up. We've needed a watchdog to keep an eye on the goings on behind the government doors for a long time. And now that we've got a mayor who beat the newspaper endorsed candidate, maybe we'll get one.

While they're at it, may I suggest doing a few open records requests about that proposed skyscraper that's planned for the old court house square? Many citizens were amazed at how that project seemed to come out of the blue, however all the elected officials seemed to have already made up their minds. Were there any secret meetings that should have be subject to the open meetings laws?

Were there any emails or other correspondence among the elected officials or between the elected officials and the building promoters that the public should see? By the way, if some elected official discussed the project on his private email account it was still city business and should be subject to an open records request.

Make us proud, MRT.com, make us proud.

The subtle way newspapers help incumbents

Voters in Midland, Texas, gave a silent cheer when the Midland Reporter Telegram announced that they would no longer endorse candidates for election. But that didn't stop them from doing the things they've always done to help incumbents stay in office.

Name recognition is possibly the most important thing a politician needs for election, especially in this era of the low information voter. The U.S. Representative for Texas District 11, Mike Conaway, has told audiences that he has a person whose full time job is getting him in the news. Hopefully, that person is paid from the huge campaign contributions he gets from the industries that lobby the committees he's on and not by taxpayers. In any event, that person is doing his/her job.

And in the case of the local paper it probably wasn't necessary. See, for example, this space filler photo in a recent edition.  There was no news there.  The newspaper just wanted us to see the incumbent politician at the podium, and to make sure we knew who he was, they identified him by name. That's how the newspaper helps incumbents. No endorsement necessary.

Interesting gun manufacturing stats

Here are some interesting stats from ATF.gov. First, the number of pistols manufactured in 2011 equaled 2,598,133 ( source).

Second, the number of pistols manufactured in 2012 equaled 3,487,883 ( source). That was a 34% increase over 2011, and if sales followed the production trend, times have been very good for gun manufacturers. (The increase was 37% for rifles.)

This trend, as everyone knows, is a result of gun control phobia implanted by the leftie anti-gun movement and the re-election of Barack Obama. Never want let a crisis go to waste. As to why the left is so keen on gun control, one has to surmise the objective is to control the opposition with the desire for safety trailing far behind.

Finally, scroll down the 2012 page and note how many manufacturers there were. It's rather astonishing to learn that the list of rifle manufacturers takes 36 pages. That includes over 100 in Texas, although some of those manufacturers appear to be mom and pop operations that made only one rifle all year. But the big guys really cranked them out.

As for America's favorite rifle, Daily Caller published a NRA press release which said "Production of the AR-15, the most popular rifle in America, more than doubled in 2012 ...".

Now, if only the supply would exceed the demand we might see some discounts.

Fox Friday came on Saturday this week -- where did the foxes go?

It was a week ago today in the early morning hours. That was the last fox photo captured on the critter cam. As you can see on the photo, he scampered through the scene and didn't stop. Black cat got the bait, and the fox went elsewhere. Hopefully, he's getting enough to eat.

Two feral cats have been eating all the food and photobombing my critter cam every night. Anyone who watched Mythbusters last week saw how a bunch of cats gave a border collie the hiss and high back when he tried to herd them proving that a small canine all alone isn't much of a threat to felines. And the feral cats here won't let the fox near the free lunch.

Anyway, Fox Friday at this blog may have to go on hiatus unless the environment changes in this urban wildlife arena. I suppose I could try to trap the cats and relocate them, but that runs the risk of changing the eco-balance. They may actually be serving some beneficial purpose -- keeping the rodent population in check, for example -- so who knows what might happen?

Unintended consequences -- Obamacare med devices tax kills jobs

The Advanced Medical Technology Association released a survey on 02/19/2014 titled Impact of the Medical Device Excise Tax which showed some interesting results, unintended though they may be. Via WashingtonTimes.com.

Some of the key findings:

JOB LOSS
The tax has resulted in employment reductions of approximately 14,000 industry workers and forgone hiring of 19,000 workers. The total job impact of the tax on industry employment was approximately 33,000.

Independent estimates of the relationship between direct employment in the industry and indirect employment among suppliers and in the general economy found a ratio of four indirect jobs for each direct job.1

Applying this ratio to jobs lost or foregone suggests that the impact of the tax on indirect employment would be approximately 132,000 jobs, for a total job loss due to the tax of as many as 165,000 jobs.

REDUCED R&D
Almost one-third of respondents (30.6%) said they had reduced R&D as the result of the tax.

MOVED JOBS ABROAD
Almost 10 percent of respondents said they had relocated manufacturing outside of the U.S. or expanded manufacturing abroad rather than in the U.S. because of the tax.

OTHER NEGATIVE IMPACTS
Three-quarters of respondents said they had taken one or more of the following actions in response to the tax: deferred or cancelled capital investments; deferred or cancelled plans to open new facilities; reduced investment in start-up companies; found it more difficult to raise capital (among start-up companies); reduced or deferred increases in employee compensation.

FUTURE IMPACTS
While the focus of the survey was on effects of the tax in its first year, several questions were future-oriented and suggest that the tax will have additional negative impacts over time if not repealed.

58% of respondents said they would consider reducing employment if the device tax were not repealed.

50% said they would consider reducing R&D investment if the device tax were not repealed.

There was one aspect of these survey results that could have had a bearing on how the questions were answered: "Sixty percent of the respondents were currently operating at a profit, while 40% were not." A company in the red may be planning on cutbacks anyway.

Nevertheless, logic tells us that any company facing a tax on its products will make adjustments to compensate for the expense of that tax, whether it be raising prices if the marketplace will allow it, or cutting costs elsewhere.

Fortunately for the human race, this Obamacare tax only affects American companies. The creative powerhouses elsewhere may take up the slack. President Obama has always seemed uneasy with America's role as world leader, and here's one area which might provide him some comfort.

One Square Mile in Midland TV documentary -- watch sneak preview online

A year ago we got word that Carl and Elisabeth Crum were going to make a "One Square Mile" documentary to air on PBS featuring our humble community of Midland, Texas.

Well, they did it. And it came out quite nice. It's supposed to be broadcast on February 27th at 7:30pm on Basin PBS in Midland/Odessa. But why wait? Watch a sneak preview right now right here!

Here's a quote from one of the interviewees who summed up Midland rather succinctly.

I heard a report not too long ago that Midland has the lowest unemployment rate in the whole nation. But there's really not a lot to see. Pretty deserty. Uh, pretty dry. Really windy. I can't imagine anyone coming here other than work. I really enjoy it here; this is where I call home.

Well, we have a very large beach but without the inconvenience of an ocean.

George Soros went short on the stock market last year

George Soros has come to be known as a political powerhouse of the left. Maybe he was indoctrinated early on to the myths of socialism, and as an adult he has used his immense wealth to help elect Democrats and defeat Republicans.

But being wrong headed about socialism doesn't mean he's wrong about everything. He has always been a very shrewd and successful investor. And he has the big buck to show for it.

So this news that his fund management company was holding put options on 7,090,000 shares of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) at the end of Q4 is telling. Source: REVEALED: George Soros Doubled His Bet That The Stock Market Is Going Down.

The present tense of that Business Insider headline was a little bit misleading, but that's the price we pay in these days of website hit seeking missives.

Back to the point, by the end of last year Soros was betting that the market would go down. The S&P did take a dip in January, and he may have cashed out then. And what he's doing now isn't revealed. But it is interesting that this old socialist still has the timing touch.

IRS got taken for billions in fraudulent refund claims -- and they're going to be involved in Obamacare?

First the good news: The IRS paid out $1.6 billion less in fraudulent refunds in 2012 than in 2011. The bad news is that in 2012 it was still $3.6 billion. For purposes of this blog post, "fraudulent refunds" refers to tax refunds to people using stolen social security numbers.

(I had my own experience with this when I tried to file my 2011 return online only to find out someone else had already filed one seeking a refund to me in another city. I have a sneaking suspicion that they paid it even though I reported it in plenty of time to stop it.)

It appears to be quite easy for thieves to buy someone's most personal information. Now that each of our medical histories is going into some healthcare provider's database which will be shared with who knows whom, it won't be long before it's all available for purchase.

So far Obamacare has been a miserable failure, and only the most loyal Obamaphile would try to deny that. Maybe it will get better. Or maybe Republicans can repeal it.

But the IRS is a troubled agency. They've used their power to thwart political opposition to Obama. And they've paid out way too much money to ID thieves. And now they are requiring businesses to swear Obamacare doesn't affect their staffing decisions. If we didn't know it before, we certainly know now that getting them into the business of our medical insurance was a very bad idea.

Charles C. W. Cooke makes the connection -- if photo ID requirements are detrimental to voting rights they are also detrimental to gun owner rights

Voter ID and Gun Rights is the title of the article.  Mr. Cooke begins by pointing out how difficult it is for some to get a photo ID.  Quite true.

I've had some experience with that myself in trying to help someone get a photo ID. If a certified copy of a birth certificate had not surfaced it might have been a fruitless effort. In Texas an applicant has a huge burden to overcome to obtain a photo ID if he/she doesn't already have a photo ID.

Back to Mr. Cooke. He presents both sides of the argument for requiring a photo ID to vote. Then he addresses the right to bear arms. Federal law requires a prospective gun buyer to present an ID and undergo a background check before buying a gun from a licensed dealer.

Then to obtain a concealed carry license an applicant not only has to present valid identification and undergo another background check, he/she must take a class, pass a test on the law, and prove proficiency with firearms.  Here's Mr. Cooke:

This is to say that progressives who rail against similar requirements at the voting booth spend much of the rest of their time doing their level best to expand the use of identification requirements within the Second Amendment’s sphere and attempt to complicate the system of private sales — including between family members. Could we not fairly make the case here, as opponents make the case against voter ID, that these rules are going to limit — unfairly and disproportionately — poor, minority, and immigrant Americans’ access to what is an enumerated and recognized constitutional right? Could one not make the case, further, that this is particularly worrying given that the poor are more likely to be in need of the means of self-protection than are the rich? I rather think that we can.

If ID requirements for gun ownership are justified for that constitutional right, they should be justified for voting rights as well. Good point, Mr. Cooke.

A sound system that could kill

It's a speaker system owned by the European Space Agency and which is used to subject spacecraft to the pressure and vibration of a real launch.

But it can do more than shake out loose nuts or bolts, it could kill a person. From European Space Agency Has A Sound System That Can Kill You Easily:

When nitrogen is pumped through the horn, it is capable of producing sound over 154 decibels. The resulting sound is similar to standing close to several jets as they take off and is more than enough to permanently deafen someone. Sounds this loud can be harmful to humans and have been used in lower intensities to control crowds, as burglar-deterrents and in the battlefield. Sound grenades produce sound levels between 120 and 190 decibels and are enough to take a person’s life. A recent German research found that sounds up to 210 decibels loud could permanently damage internal organs.

We've all heard music blaring from a car at a red light and wondered how the occupants survived. It probably wasn't loud enough to do damage to anything other than eardrums. But suppose one of those car hackers came up with a way to turn up the volume remotely. Wouldn't that be devious? Well yes, but most of us would probably use it to turn the volume down.

They built a better mousetrap

How does that old saw go? Build a better mousetrap and they will come? Something like that. Anyway, someone did build a better mousetrap.

Mice problems come and go, but there's nothing like a cold snap to bring them indoors. How they get in is a question for Houdini. And getting rid of them is another challenge. The old fashioned snap traps work great. Poisons work very well too, but neither are safe when there are small children or pets around.

So Woodstream Corp came up with the Victor Electronic Mousetrap. It uses four AA batteries, and when a mouse touches both metal pads it closes the circuit. The charge must stop the rodent's heart. Because it works!

The thumbnails below are photos showing what the device looks like on the outside and the inside including a bonus photo of the first casualty.

I bought mine for $19 plus tax at Amazon.com.

I think I'll call it "Lil Old Sparky."

Fox Friday 2-14-14 -- In the Jungle the Quiet Jungle

The lion sleeps tonight.

The reason for the Fox Cam and all the chicken drumsticks tossed out as bait is to lure the urban foxes into range for some photos. Unfortunately, most nights two feral cats, Black Cat and Calico, get to the food first. Each day this week I put one drumstick out between 8 and 9 pm and another drumstick between 4 and 5 am. The cats figured it out quickly and must lurk around waiting for a handout. Calico must not have another food source as he even ate some dry dog food one night. In any event, Calico is the top dog in this arena.

Calico sees Fox. Calico hides, watches Fox approach -- see the eyes? Calico creeps onto the scene. A stand off. And Fox turns tail.

 

Another standoff. Fox turns tail again. All the food is gone by this time anyway.

 

The next night Black Cat got to the food first. Uh oh, here comes Calico. And in a flash of blurred pixels, Calico chases Black Cat away.

 

In the early morning hours Fox is nosing around. Hey! Who's there? It's his benefactor bearing a chicken leg offering. Fox makes himself scarce, but a few minutes later he's back, looking for that drumstick.

 

He's looking. He's looking. Found it! It was a successful night for Old Crocked Tail. He's not always that lucky in this battle for food with those two wily felines. But sometimes ...

In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. A wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a wimoweh.

 

You talking to me?

No wonder Dems want convicted felons to vote

The issue of whether convicted felons should be able to vote comes up from time to time, and Democrats want it. Their motive, whether framed as fairness or equality, is very simple to identify after looking at some stats. Felons favor Democrats. See Jail survey: 7 in 10 felons register as Democrats. Paul Bedard at WashintonExaminer.com cites the research:

– New York: 61.5 percent register Democratic, 9 percent register Republican
– New Mexico: 51.9 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican
– North Carolina: 54.6 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

Rather than a blanket yes or no, a better policy for them and all voters for that matter, would be to let all citizens vote as long as they can pass a simple test to prove they possess a minimum level of knowledge to help them decide how to vote. Now that's a radical idea. Imagine the outcry from the politicians who like their voters ignorant and uninformed.

Niall Ferguson's six killer apps for prosperity

That's clever the way he uses the word "apps" to get to a level he thinks the people who need to hear him will understand.

Anyway, Ferguson sounds pessimistic when he sounds the alarm about America in such articles as America’s ‘Oh Sh*T!’ Moment or How America Lost Its Way. And to put a little urgency to it, he says civilizations don't decline, historically they collapse in a very short order sometimes as little as a decade.

The killer apps he says propelled the West ahead of the rest are these:

1. Competition. Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics, which were in turn internally divided into competing corporate entities, among them the ancestors of modern business corporations.

2. The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.

3. The Rule of Law and Representative Government. An optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private-property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

4. Modern Medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.

5. The Consumer Society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity—enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.

6. The Work Ethic. Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

(He talks about the topic in this Ted talk.)

Unfortunately, Western societies, and especially the U.S., are deleting their own killer apps. There's hope, but it won't do to sit around thinking there will be plenty of time to stop a slow decline. If/when it happens it will come rather suddenly and will be difficult or impossible to stop. What to do?

What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic.

Ferguson wrote that two years ago. We need that reboot now.

Drone strikes and collateral damage -- NSA a key part

Glenn Greenwald's new website contains an article titled The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program which details how the killer drone program probably operates. It's all hush hush, but they've interviewed an anonymous former drone operator, and of course they've had access to Edward Snowden's purloined digital data.

Seems that there is little if any human intelligence directing them to terrorists, it's all information gathered from NSA's analysis of telephone metadata and cell phone tracking. So the drone target is actually a phone with hopes that the human target is nearby. Consequently, lots of bystanders, visitors, or family members become casualties. Death by association. Excerpt:

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”

There's another casualty of the killer drones. The noisy antiwar crowd that commanded the headlines during the Bush administration has been struck deaf, dumb, and blind.

Cato tells us how to get back on track

Most of us will readily acknowledge that the federal government is growing too fast. How fast? Brian Domitrovic provides some facts:

The basic metric that reflects all this is the level of federal spending. In 2013 the government of the United States spent 55 percent more money — in real, inflation-adjusted terms — than it did in 1999. Economic growth in that 14-year span has been 30 percent. Where government at all levels soaked up 32 percent of national economic output in 1999, it took in 37 percent in 2013 — an increase of nearly a sixth, in less than a decade and a half. By way of comparison, for the first 125 years of this nation’s existence under the Constitution, through 1914, government spending was largely parked between 3 percent and 6 percent of national output.

That it's growing at all in this economic environment isn't so good, but when it's growing too fast we should really be concerned. Problem is, most Americans are not. Mr. Domitrovic suggests that many Americans have gotten used to the idea, and younger folks who've come of age during this time won't see it as a problem at all. There will be a day when no one remembers what it was like not to live under a huge government.

Mr. Domitrovic harkens back to the days of the Ronald Reagan, the tax cut, and a growing economy. Ah, the good old days. Democrats called it "the decade of greed," which showed how little they really understood about incentives and the economy.

What to do? His solution is in the title: Tax Revolt! It’s Time to Learn from Past SuccessHe closes with this:

Tax cuts, stable money, and the rendering of spending and regulation as superfluous are the formula of the supply-side revolution — the Reagan Revolution. They stand sentinel right there, not long ago in our history, as the way to advance through our sluggishness and purposelessness today.

Via.

Can it happen again? I want to be optimistic. All it would take is a few million changed minds.

The old fable of the ant and the grasshopper just got updated

I wish I had thought of this first.

Most of us probably remember the story we heard as children about how the industrious ants scavenged all summer for food and stored it away for the winter. But the grasshopper just hopped around having fun, laughing at the silly ant. Come winter the ants thrived in their underground colony while the grasshopper starved. That was a teaching moment.

The story has been updated to fit the current state of our society as it relates to government. The ants do their thing, and the grasshopper does his thing. Come winter the grasshopper goes to the government, calls a press conference, and makes the case for the unfairness of inequality. The government taxes the ants to provide for the grasshopper. The grasshopper now has it easy while the ants starve. There's a lesson there, too.

This story comes from a website called the Laughing Conservative, however I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Read the whole story at The Ant and the grasshopper: Two Versions.

You know, if we could somehow give the ant colony Obamacare and all its effects the ants would have more free time, just like American workers will.

How long before the computers that run our cars get hacked

The highly publicized computer hack of Target store credit card information was a loud wake up call. If we didn't already know that computers are vulnerable to hackers, we certainly do now.

So along comes these guys who have developed a little device that when installed in a vehicle can control the computers in that vehicle which control just about everything the vehicle can do. See Forbes.com -- This iPhone-Sized Device Can Hack A Car, Researchers Plan To Demonstrate. But their device has its limits:

For now, the tool communicates via only Bluetooth, limiting the range of any wireless attack to a few feet. But by the time the two researchers present their research in Singapore, they say they’ll upgrade it to use a GSM cellular radio instead that would make it possible to control the device from miles away.

Terrific. If these white hat hackers can develop such a system it's only a matter of time before the criminal hackers can do it.

Via dailycaller.com.

Fox Friday 2-7-14, Baby it's cold outside

These first two pics show Calico, one of the feral cats that help themselves to the food set out to lure the fox.

On the left -- cat got surprised by me peeking over the fence, and zoom! Off like a rocket. On the right -- this is what falling snow looks like through this lens. Temp is 13 degrees.

The fox has his mouth open in each of these three pics. The one in the middle looks like he's making a noise, perhaps one of the sounds you hear in What does the fox say -- an entertaining video which attempts to explain the sounds a fox makes. I hope he's getting enough to eat, because the cats beat him to the food most nights. Notice the temperature in the one on the far right, 10 degrees. Brrr.

People working less is a good thing -- White House spin on CBO report

If conservatives only had a Jon Stewart or a Saturday Night Live to mock progressives instead of the other way around. The White House spin on a CBO report is source material for countless jokes.

Seems that the new CBO outlook is predicting a decline in the number of full time workers over the next several years. Excerpt:

The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024. Although CBO projects that total employment (and compensation) will increase over the coming decade, that increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA. The decline in full-time-equivalent employment stemming from the ACA will consist of some people not being employed at all and other people working fewer hours; however, CBO has not tried to quantify those two components of the overall effect. The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).

That's a lot of words to say the number of full time workers will decrease, the number of part time workers will increase, and the labor force participation rate will decrease. (See chart on the right. It's on the front page of that same CBO Outlook.)

So the Obama crowd latches onto the language saying the decline in full time employment "stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply...". Spin: Workers will be given more opportunities not to work, and the opposition just doesn't get it. See FACT CHECK: Anti-Obamacare chorus is off key. (Link goes to wmbfnews.com although the same faux-factcheck AP editorial was published in the print edition of our local Midland Reporter Telegram.)

But here's the thing. The population is still growing, and young people are ready to enter the workplace. Yes, there will be boomers retiring, but with moves afoot to reform immigration, i.e., allow otherwise undocumented immigrants to work legally and encourage new unskilled workers to immigrant, an increase in the available workforce is inevitable. Unfortunately, low end workers will be hit hardest.

But hey, there will be subsidies. And perhaps we should all be thinking about this a new way. Instead of working, take a vacation. Instead of buying a car, take a bus and text safely along the way. Instead of paying someone to do the annual tax return, cash the subsidy check and go out on the town.

Sigh. If only we had Saturday Night Live on our side. There was a time back in the early days of the show when Dan Akroyd did a spot on impersonation of Jimmy Carter. And in one especially good skit Akroyd's Jimmy Carter gave a friendly talk to the American people in which he tried to explain how we should change our attitude about inflation. Excerpt from the transcript:

Inflation is our friend.

For example, consider this: in the year 2000, if current trends continue, the average blue-collar annual wage in this country will be $568,000. Think what this inflated world of the future will mean - most Americans will be millionaires. Everyone will feel like a bigshot. Wouldn't you like to own a $4,000 suit, and smoke a $75 cigar, drive a $600,000 car? I know I would!

So who wouldn't want less work, a longer vacation, more leisure time? I know I would!

How the porked up farm bill got passed -- Tim Carney has the skinny

It was a neat trick. The farm bill had a lot of opposition from Republicans, conservatives, libertarians and Democrats. But it passed anyway because of the transfer of one payment program from the omnibus spending bill to the farm bill. Timothy P. Carney explains it in Why indefensible farm bill was backed by party leaders and K Street.

That payment program was “Payments in Lieu of Taxes,” or PILT. About 30% of the land in the U.S. is federally owned, and states and counties can't collect property taxes from the U.S. government on that land. So PILT was devised to transfer federal taxpayer money to those states and counties to help offset the property taxes they could have collected had it been privately owned. It's a very popular program in states which contain a lot of federal land.

PILT was originally in the omnibus bill that was passed in January. But the Farm Bill still needed votes. So just before the omnibus bill came to a vote, in a clever move, PILT was removed from the omnibus bill and stuck in the Farm Bill. It worked. The Farm Bill passed, and big Agribusiness and their lobbyists will get what they want as soon as Obama signs it.

Crony capitalism is a on scourge on our government, and no one does a better job of exposing these parasites than Tim Carney.

Thomas Sowell sums up the lefty mindset

Anyone who pays attention to popular political culture has noticed the contrast between how conservatives treat progressives and how progressives treat conservatives. Someone, I forget who, observed long ago that generally speaking conservatives think progressives are good people who are misguided. Whereas progressives think conservatives are evil. And so we see their despicable behavior towards people who disagree with them. Thomas Sowell cites the treatment of Sarah Palin and Charles Murray as examples in his article titled Fact-Free Liberals: Part IV, and the following paragraph sums it up so nicely that it was a bonus quotation of the day at Carpe Diem one day last month. To wit:

The vision of the left is not just a vision of the world. For many, it is also a vision of themselves -- a very flattering vision of people trying to save the planet, rescue the exploited, create "social justice" and otherwise be on the side of the angels. This is an exalting vision that few are ready to give up, or to risk on a roll of the dice, which is what submitting it to the test of factual evidence amounts to. Maybe that is why there are so many fact-free arguments on the left, whether on gun control, minimum wages, or innumerable other issues -- and why they react so viscerally to those who challenge their vision.

That "vision of themselves" sounds about right as it seems that for many lefties their political ideology is a major part of their identity.

Now there's a cool piano -- cool as ice

As seen behind a piano shop on a snowy day.

Yakov Smirnoff and the Soviet Department of Jokes

There's a Mark Maron podcast interview with Yakov Smirnoff available online. (download it before it goes behind the paywall.) It's quite entertaining, not in a "ha-ha" way, but more in a "Wow, I didn't know that" kind of way.

Smirnoff was a standup comic in Odessa, Ukraine, during the cold war when the Soviet Union had tight control of everything. That's a main component of communism, by the way. Add in a case of paranoia, and they came up with the Department of Jokes. That's according to Mr. Smirnoff. He said the same thing in this 1985 interview published in the Chicago Tribune. If was in the newspaper, it must be true, right?

Anyway, a comedian had to submit his jokes to the Department of Jokes which had up or down approval over them. Once a routine was approved, a comedian used it for a year before going through the process again. Joke writers learned quickly what kind of jokes would pass, and jokes about animals were considered fairly safe. The one joke that got him summoned was this one:

A tiny male ant married a female elephant. But the elephant died on their wedding night.

At the funeral the ant's friends consoled him, and he cried, "Married just one day, and I'll spend the rest of my life digging the grave!"

The committee thought the lifetime of digging a grave was a reference to communism. But he explained that there was no reference, it was just an ant and an elephant. And the joke passed.

Quite a time the residents of Ukraine must have had back then. Smirnoff said his family shared a one bathroom, one kitchen house with nine other families. There was one radio with speakers in each family's quarters. It received the government station, and listeners could turn it on or off, up or down. But all they got was the government propaganda. As an approved comedian, he got work on a cruise ship, and after seeing how well fed the foreigners were he became skeptical of the Soviet propaganda. Eventually, his family got out through Jimmy Carter's Wheat-for-People agreement.

Things are still a little bit rocky for Ukrainians, but at least they don't have a Department of Jokes.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., comedians don't have free rein,either. Political correctness has claimed a few careers. And one has to wonder whether Jay Leno got the ax because of jokes about Obama. But as long as comedians ridicule the right people -- Republicans, George W. Bush, conservatives -- they'll be all right. Conservative comedians can tell jokes about animals.

So where is Yakov Smirnoff now? He's doing shows in Branson, Missouri, where old jokes get a second life.

Editor's addendum: Did you hear the one about the voting bloc that fell in love with Barack Obama?  On their honeymoon Obama buried them under Obamacare. They'll spend the rest of their lives digging out from under it!  - Robo-ed. |  What a country!!  - Sleepless.

A land mine detector in your shoe

Now there's a app.

A Colombian company called Lemur Studio has designed a device that, if functional, could be worn over or in a shoe making it a metal detector. If it detected metal nearby it would send a signal to another device worn like a wristwatch which would allow the wearer to pinpoint the metal. The objective is to use it like a mine detector and save lives and limbs in mine infested areas. Presumably, false positives would not be so numerous as to discourage its use.

The company website says it's a design company, so someone else would probably have to actually make it. Their application for the World Design Impact Prize 2013-2014 can be viewed here. Glass-half-empty people will want to see the section following "Briefly describe the challenges the project currently faces":

At this time the problem that the project would be the technology in terms of the template because according to our research is carried out by means of nano-technology which would be very expensive to do in a country like Colombia and would require external entities, of other countries, for the successful completion of the project.

Hmm. There's the rub. An ordinary metal detector can be purchased for a few hundred dollars, and if that's out of reach for people living in land mined areas then high tech shoes might be a bit too pricy.

That aside, it is a neat concept, and maybe some outfit like Nike will just do it.

Via WonderfulEngineering.com.