The Rougblog

Lansing One More Time

2009-11-25T07:46:00.001-05:00

This is a long one.

To Lansing this morning for ortho. To St. Ignace from Lansing. To Oscoda County from St. Ignace.

I hope to be home by midnight. I hate days like this.

Medal or Court Marshal?

2009-11-24T20:30:00.000-05:00

One of the baddest of the bad guys in Iraq has been captured by American forces. The terrorist in question, Ahmed Hashim Abed, is the kingpin behind the torture deaths of four BlackWater USA contractors in Fallujah whose charred bodies were left hanging on the side of a bridge.

Here is the twist. In our new world of fighting terrorists with a copy of the US Constitution, Abed has sued his captors. From FoxNews:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

What a country.

h/t Michelle Malkin

More AGW Threats

2009-11-23T16:46:00.003-05:00

While writing my previous post I found this list from the Heritage Foundation highlighting 100 things for which AGW is being blamed.

Late for a party? Miss a meeting? Forget to pay your rent? Blame climate change; everyone else is doing it. From an increase in severe acne to all societal collapses since the beginning of time, just about everything gone wrong in the world today can be attributed to climate change. Here’s a list of 100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem.

List is here.

AGW Causing Prostitution

2009-11-23T16:45:00.000-05:00

Calamitous global climate change is forcing poor third world women into the flesh trade according to a UN official. What seems to be missed by the wise Suneeta Mukherjee is that it is the lack of wealth that drives most people into poverty and forces people already suffering from poverty to stay there.

And it is poverty itself that overwhelmingly serves as the bludgeon that knocks people into the sex trades, not the alleged (and disputed) rise in Earth's temperature of 0.74 degrees Celsius.

Yet, it is poverty promoting measures such as the ones to be divined at the Copenhagen conference that the UN is pushing to solve a problem that has existed since halitosis suffering fat ugly perverts first discovered a heavy coin purse could buy more than merely gruel and ale.

Three Points Essential To Climate Change Negotiations

Among observers, the consensus is that, in order to achieve that sort of success, three points must be agreed upon.

Mid- and long-term goals for reductions in greenhouse gases
Financial support for newly industrialized countries and developing countries from developed nations
Technology transfer to poorer countries

Global wealth redistribution, or international welfare, is an essential ingredient that UN authorities believe it must ultimately achieve in order to save the planet, and the UN's Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen is a critical step along that path for the world body. All the other arguments are merely window dressing.

That mandated global reductions in CO2 emissions will help to cripple the world economy seems to have little import to these people, and by default, the crocodile tears being shed by international bureaucrats over prostitutes in Manila seems more than a bit forced. A bad world economy will compel more people to wander into prostitution than any CO2 action being pushed by the UN will ever prevent.

They know this, they simply don't care. It doesn't fit the narrative.

h/ts to Watts and Drudge

Harry Reid: Worker of Miracles

2009-11-22T12:32:00.003-05:00

It is almost a joke these days as to how much people believe that the government can cure their ills.

Broke? They can fix that.

Unemployed? They can fix that.

Uneducated? They can fix that too.

Fearful of "illness and death"? Even that can be fixed by government if Harry Reid is allowed to talk about it long enough.

“Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation – indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.

Gosh, who wouldn't want to be guaranteed the right to live free from the fear of illness and death?

Our Senate has morphed from a political body into a hall of Angels. If they have the power to cure us of our fear of death and illness, why don't they just wave an angelic hand and miraculously cure all of our diseases to begin with instead of birthing some entanglement of bureaucracies whose primary cost saving feature will be the creation of a big ass queue?

h/t Darlene at Protein Wisdom who says

Who the hell can hear this statement and not want to reach for the phone and call 911 and have Reid 5150′d?

News That Couldn't Come At A Better Time

2009-11-20T14:30:00.000-05:00

The arrogance of government is often hard to stomach.

Here we are struggling in the midst of what is the greatest economic global collapse in nearly 100 years. This collapse is a gift to this country and the world from our benevolent overlords whose intestines get tied in knots whenever they detect either inequality between private citizens or private enterprise freely taking place without government's direct involvement.

Despite our government's inability to even deliver mail without a multibillion dollar shortfall, predict unemployment more than a couple of months in the future, or teach school children where the Earth is on a globe, it thinks it can predict the mature form of industries that are yet in their infancy. (Do we even need to mention that the industry-child is a cloned creation of government implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother?)

If only given the opportunity to look into an expensive taxpayer financed crystal ball, it feels it will be able to determine what jobs unemployed workers should start training for on more of the taxpayer's dime.

The U.S. Secretary of Labor announced this morning that Michigan will share a $4 million pot of federal stimulus funds with Indiana and Ohio to collect information about the labor market and help workers and businesses enter renewable energy industries.

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was joined by U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek. and others to discuss how the grant will help auto manufacturers looking to diversify and workers who have lost their jobs find employment in the green energy sector.

Schauer said this will help a number of businesses in his district, which includes Jackson.

“This news couldn’t come at a better time,” he said.

Ya, this really is a great time to witness that our government continues to be willing to toss good money after bad. This in a failing economy that it helped nurture by spending borrowed money on stupid shit like this that will not make a blip's worth of difference in anyone's life other than the people that will be paid to collect the data.

If bureaucrats had to pony up their own money to perpetuate this nonsense it would stop cold in its tracks. It is unaccountable, it is incorrigible, and it is spending our money for the sake of spending our money.

Indeed, this sort of news could never come at a better time. Where can I apply for one of these data collecting jobs?

Another Chapter in Stimulus Idiocy

2009-11-19T13:34:00.002-05:00

From QandO:

This one is right out of the “you’ve got to be kidding me” category.

It seems that stimulus funds, you know that 787 billion bill without an “ounce” of pork in it, are funding a study at the University of Illinois (wow, there’s a surprise) to look at “the relationship between fat taxes and food consumption, diet quality, and obesity.”

In reality it is a study to assess the feasibility of taxing soda, under the guise of fighting obesity, to fund health care reform. You remember all the trial balloons that were launched earlier in the year concerning this tax? Well, now taxpayers are funding research to figure out if it is feasible to further tax taxpayers.

Grubbing as much money as can be gotten out of the wallets of the innocent has become the new American pastime.

Remote, Pristine, Undeveloped and Poor: Just the Way They Like It

2009-11-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

cross posted at Right Michigan

It is easy to identify the geographic division between Michigan's two peninsulas. The Straits of Mackinac provides a clearly visible deep blue barrier between the two disparate land masses. Even though they are today connected by a mighty ribbon of concrete and steel that stretches the five miles between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, the human division is sometimes a bit harder to detect.

The two areas, while now sharing a statehood and a bridge, have lived quite different lives and have not always been the most understanding of neighbors. In fact, it was a shotgun marriage of sorts that got the two together in the first place with the pre-statehood Michigan legislature in 1836 finally accepting the U.P. as a booby prize in its war with Ohio over the Toledo Strip. It wasn't long after this however that mining proved that there was indeed great intrinsic value in the Upper Peninsula if one only cared look beneath the surface of the Earth.

During the years since the wedding there have been many freezings and thawings of the relationship. Generally there was tolerance but there were also some spats. A few dozen years ago there was even a movement afoot to turn the U.P. into the 51st state of Superior, a movement that left me deeply upset for having been left out of the plan.

As Detroit boomed by selling high quality Gremlins, Vegas, Pintos, and Pacers to discerning buyers from places like Ishpeming and Hessel, the mining sector of the U.P.s economy was already struggling. The opening of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 helped to replace some of the area's reliance on the waning mining industry by making the U.P. more accessible to the thick wallets owned by those on Detroit's payroll.

By 1995 the last of the copper mines had been closed and today iron ore is only mined in the Marquette area. Detroit's major industry has fared a bit better (okay, arguable) as portions of it only tentatively hang on, and even that much due in part to the support of U.P. taxpayers.

Those early year attitudes have changed toward the U.P. While it was once considered a sterile wilderness, it is now a coveted vacation destination to be scenically enjoyed from the deck of a boat, to the seat of a snowmobile, to the back of a horse, though I wouldn't recommend all in one day. Most of these weekenders want the region to remain a wilderness and unblemished by any future mining ventures, regardless of how many of those scraping by on meager restaurant tips and the sales of smoked whitefish feel about it.

There are a few northern state legislators from the solidly democratic Upper Peninsula that are tiring of being thought of as a tourist only region, especially in light of a renewed interest in the U.P.'s mineral potential.

Five of the six legislators that represent any part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Sen Mike Prusi, Sen. Jason Allen, Rep. Mike Lahti, Rep. Steve Lindberg, and Rep. Judy Nerat, signed on to a press release that attacked Detroit area activists for a ballot proposal that would severely restrict future mining operations in the U.P. under the "guise" of water safety. All but Allen are Democrats.

In a state where divisions between people and regions have held us back for far too long, we can’t help but look askance at proposals that divide our state, rather than unite us.

As elected leaders from the U.P., we view a recently-announced ballot proposal to ban mining under the clever guise of protecting water to be nothing more than an attack by special interests on the U.P. and its people, heritage, and economic future. The people of the U.P. should have the right to decide what is in their region’s best interest. Additionally, a statewide precedent could be set where ballot initiatives could negatively impact other industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, or siting of renewable energy facilities.

The Upper Peninsula is solidly Democrat. Not only are all the state representatives from the UP Democrats, but the only state senator whose district is totally within the U.P. is a Democrat. Democrat Bart Stupak represents all of the U.P. as well as much of the northern lower peninsula in the US House. To add insult to injury, Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama received a majority of U.P. votes cast in their last elections.

Let us be honest. If there was ever a region outside of the city of Detroit that more deserved to suffer the consequences of dumb votes cast, it is Michigan's Upper Peninsula. And yet, there might be a slight shaking of the foundation.

For many years it has been the Democrat Party that pushed initiatives that favored collective causes over the desires of the individual. A great democrat philosopher once put it perfectly..."the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one." Unfortunately for the Yoopers hoping to find economic deliverance from renewed mining interests, they are now outnumbered by many others from Michigan's south side that feel that the whitefish and pastie industries should be plenty for Yoopers to live on. I understand too that Spock absolutely loves him some pasties.

If people from Michigan's U.P. (and indeed from all of its rural areas) want to preserve their ability to look after their own best interests, they will make it much easier on themselves if the stop buying into a political philosophy that prevents the individual or the few from having to succumb to the desires of the many. Individual rights are the backbone of this country, and this is the reason that our Founding Fathers feared democracy rather than embrace it (despite what you might hear blathered about by today's politicians on National Socialist Radio.)

Our Founding Fathers did not want distant Kings controlling the citizenry any more that they would want Detroit and Washington DC. area lawyers and vacationers controlling the economic destiny of Marquette and Iron Mountain.

The U.P.’s business, labor, and governmental leaders are already coalescing around efforts to defeat this ill-timed and ill-intentioned proposal. Just this past October, the Upper Peninsula Association of County Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution opposing the ballot proposal. We will stand with them in their efforts and oppose this attempt by narrow, selfish interests from below the bridge to impose their will on those of us proud to call the U.P. home.

Perhaps the solidly Democrat Upper Peninsula is waking up.

MARK STEYN: JIHAD AND THE SCANDAL OF “BRAIN-DEAD” DIVERSITY

2009-11-17T20:54:00.004-05:00

Everyone should read Mark Steyn's column from last Friday.

There are ten solid quotes that just jumped off the page at me but I'll only tease you with one:

“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them.

Please read it.

You can find all of Mark's writing at Steyn Online.

In the UK, A Man's Home is His Nanny's Castle

2009-11-17T18:06:00.000-05:00

In another step toward the dark abyss, the UK is drawing up regulations that would allow health/safety inspectors unprecedented access into private homes for the purpose of preventing childhood accidents.

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

What kind of a stretch is it from here to assume that these same benevolent servants of the state will be headed back every few months to check battery strength, whether the water temperature gauges have been fiddled with, or whether gates at the top of stairways are in place at all times?

When inside the house, what other potential negative situations do you suppose will be encouraged to be reported? Will objectionable reading materials be cause for alarm, or will the recycling police be alerted should a parent here or there not be separating their plastics properly? Will refrigerators be checked for balanced diets? What if, gasp, out of season fruits are on the table?

Nice [National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot.

The guidance aims to “encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers (sic) with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment”. It continues: “If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment.”

This should really keep the midwives hopping. I can hear it now. "Ma'am, your water just broke. I'll go boil some water, collect some clean linens, and head to the truck for a smoke alarm."

A h/t to Bruce at Q and O who opines

Two things at work here – one of which we’re all familiar, even in the US. This is what? It is “for the children”. All manner of state intrusion is prefaced by claiming it is “for the children”. Which brings us to the second thing – the assumption by the state that parents are too dumb and inept to properly care for their children. While this is true of some, certainly, the standard is applied to all. And we’ve certainly seen evidence that the state is so much better, haven’t we?

So why does the state not only feel the necessity but right to intrude at such a level?
About 100,000 children are admitted to hospital each year for home injuries at a cost of £146m.

Well, creating a whole new bureaucracy for the purpose of installing fire alarms and window latches won't be cheap but, after all, the right to the freedom of children from suffering accidental injury cannot be exactly free.

So, lets just call it even on the expenses side of the equation--savings in accidents minus the cost of midwife spies and AAA batteries. As for the liberty side, citizens dumb enough to expose their children to unnecessary risks might not even notice that their freedoms are being trampled.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to see the once proud UK just keel over and die rather than having to watch it slowly rot away like an Alzheimer's patient. Having given up most of its sovereignty to the EU already, many of its citizens seem more than willing to cede what little freedom it still has to the remaining nannies inside its own country.

Stabenow Speaks on Health Care

2009-11-16T12:03:00.003-05:00

What is it with our esteemed overlords in that they cannot go after fraud and waste until another $1 trillion or so dollars are pumped into the system?

It has been said, wisely I might add, that you have to follow the money. Large pools of dollars themselves create the potential for fraud and abuse. Management of pools of money this large become, almost by definition, impossible to rid of abuse. A small budget of, for argument's sake, $100 is easy to watch. Each transaction can be evaluated as to its need. This becomes less and less true as the amounts of money reach into the millions, billions, and trillions.

As money pools reach astronomical levels, more and more individuals have to enter the system as overseers and administrators. Each and every one of these added individuals is another crack through which lost money may flow. A fifty dollar transaction in a $100 budget is large enough to pay attention to. A million dollar expense in a budget of several hundred billion becomes like a drop to a bucket.

Debbie Stabenow believes another $1 trillion is necessary to be pumped into the health care system. It is only then that bureaucrats like her will be bothered enough to take the time to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse already contained therein. It is this promised to be saved money that Stabenow says will help finance the overall cost of nationalized health care as supported by today's politicians. She avers, in essence, that by adding $1 trillion to the size of a program, abuse and fraud will become easier to detect and stamp out. This goes against all reason.

Adding a trillion dollars to the health care system will not alleviate fraud and abuse but will make more of it a certainty, and will make it necessary to borrow even more money from our grandchildren to compensate.

Like Dr. Peter Venkman said in Ghostbusters, "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no job is too big, no fee is too big!"

I'd be a bit more comforted if Debbie Stabenow and company weren't taking their cues from a Hollywood comedy writing team.

The Apologist in Chief

2009-11-16T10:08:00.004-05:00

We all know that Barack Obama thinks that America sucks. This was evident by his many anti-American associations prior to his ever becoming elected president, and from a number of the statements he has made both before and after he took the highest office of the country he dislikes so much.

It was, in fact, a major cornerstone of his foreign policy during the election, and has remained a part of it now that he is Commander in Chief.

America was wrong. It is sorry. Forgive it. It will be better behaved. It sucks.

While this attitude was disturbing to me from day one of his campaign, it has become infinitely more disturbing now that Obama has the keys to Air Force One and a long list of foreign countries more than willing to accept America's apology for all the evil things it has done in the name of unilateralism, imperialism, and George Bush.

Hope and change for America has meant, in foreign policy circles at least, turning our back on and insulting allies, groveling at the feet of evil dictators, and the commencement of a new era of emboldened enemies.

I see nothing good coming out of it.

Deficit Perspective

2009-11-15T08:29:00.003-05:00

I thought it would be nice to be able to see a bit of perspective.

Everyone here in Michigan knows that the state is flat broke. Governor Granholm is hinting at a 20% reduction in the size of state government, school districts just took a huge hit on their per pupil foundation grant, prisons are closing, police are being laid off, scholarships have been slashed, and local governments are taking it on the chin because Lansing has chopped its support.

All of these cuts, and countless more, have occurred or may occur in the near future because the state faced a nearly $2 billion debt when it had to present a balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year and because tax revenues, despite tax and fee increases, are continuing to plummet. If not for the bailout money that Granholm diverted from stimulus projects, the state would have had to make much deeper cuts.

$2 billion in its annual budget does sound like a lot of money. Good grief, how much is that these days, about 250,000,000 packs of smokes?

Here comes the promised perspective...in the month of October alone, the federal government racked up a deficit of $176.36 billion dollars.

The good news is that at least it was a 31 day month.

So, for each day in October, including Saturdays and Sundays, the federal government went more that twice as far in debt as the state of Michigan did the entire year of 2008, a year that saw Michigan nearly paralyzed because of funding issues.

We are so screwed.

Michigan Proves How Destitute It Is

2009-11-13T15:17:00.003-05:00

by approving funds to build a $25.3 million Great Lakes Research Center.

The state is to pay 74 percent of the cost and the university 26 percent.

The 49,000-square-foot center will house laboratories, boat maintenance facilities, offices and conference rooms. It also will accommodate joint activities of researchers from Michigan Tech and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' environmental lab in Vicksburg, Miss.

I cannot wait until next year's budget debacle when hand wringing bureaucrats will lament the absence of money to keep schools open and prisoners behind bars. Nothing that a good old fashioned tax increase won't solve.

KSM to be Tried in NYC (Idiots)

2009-11-13T10:30:00.003-05:00

I am not the only person that thinks that holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's criminal trial in NYC reaches a new threshold of stupidity.

As the BBC gleefully points out:

They say he has admitted being responsible "from A to Z" for the 9/11 attacks.

Believed to be the number three al-Qaeda leader, he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

He told a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo in December 2008 that he wanted to plead guilty to all charges against him.

But intelligence memos released earlier this year revealed he had been subjected to harsh interrogation techniques including water-boarding on multiple occasions since his capture - potentially rendering some evidence inadmissible.

The guy is a hardened terrorist who has done more than plan the murder of thousands of Americans for he has also slit an American neck or two himself.

A criminal trial brings many more dynamics into play. Was KSM read his Miranda rights when he was taken into custody? Did he get a lawyer when one was requested? Did his counsel have free access to him? Did he give up information while being tortured? On and on and on.

The possibility that KSM will be acquitted precisely because Barack Obama and Eric Holder like to play politics with national security is higher than many would think.

Talk About Jobs

2009-11-13T09:59:00.003-05:00

How will a jobs summit benefit the people who are out of work?

Will some epiphany strike the forum leaders? Will some new morsel that has never before occurred to anyone, come out of this summit and help revolutionize our economy? Or, more likely, will sound and established economic theory be pushed aside again by government hobnobs in favor of feel good policies that will ultimately punish those most productive in our society in favor of workers who cannot practice any trade without an employer?

We already know how to create jobs in this country. The problem is that the jobs we have proven we can create come at a cost that government officials are not willing to pay. They are not going to be willing to have a disparity of income so they must punitively tax the rich and vilify corporations. They are not going to allow favored constituencies to suffer without earmarked payoffs. They are not going to go forward without a system in place that will allow them to methodically spread the wealth around among citizens of this country and citizens of the world. They are not going to allow the country to grow naturally and robustly when sustained economic growth ultimately results in CO2 output.

This job summit will be a grand opportunity for this administration to talk in emotional terms about solutions that cannot be reached with emotional abandon.

We know how to create jobs in this country, but ten percent unemployment is more palatable to the powers that be than is five percent unemployment where the rich control too large a percentage of the pie. As long as we are afraid to lavishly reward the most productive members of our society we will be tamping down on their productivity and the jobs they create.

For some odd reason I do not believe this will be a theme of Obama's job summit.

The Impenetrable Brain of Dan Scripps

2009-11-11T08:38:00.003-05:00

cross posted at Right Michigan

Michigan Rep. Daniel Scripps works in an office where the walls have been so well insulated from distractions that even a whisper of the loudest of outside events cannot seem to penetrate its fortress. In fact, all of Scripps' senses have been so protected from the human condition here in Michigan that if an unemployed and destitute constituent was tossed through one of Scripps' high energy office windows onto the representative's pristine plush pile carpeting, he could nonchalantly step over the bleeding body to the mirror without even breaking stride.

This is the consistent and dedicated vision we taxpayers look for in a wannabe career politician; a focus on the Utopian future so unblinking and unyielding that smacking the representative up side the head with a rotten carp wrapped in newsprint wouldn't get his attention.

Even if the carp had little impact on Scripps' world, it would be sweet if he took a moment to read the headlines in the newspaper that surrounded it.

Michigan has the highest unemployment rate among all of Barack Obama's 57 states at 15.3 percent. His district, while enjoying an unemployment rate below the state average, has about twice as many people out of work as it did a year ago at this time, and still suffers an unemployment rate higher than all other states but California, Rhode Island and Nevada. No wonder the big lug can focus so clearly on the things that truly matter.

Retail spending is down all over. GDP, if you ignore the deficit spending of the federal government, is down too. House values have dropped while foreclosures have risen. Many of those who have yet to rent an outbound moving van are simply waiting until they can unload their current house at a considerable loss, and all of this is taking place at a time when cherubic little Jeffrey's classroom has just gained four desks so that the district can lay off a couple more teachers.

Let's look at some basic economic truths.

People who are out of work do not spend as much money as they did when they were working. People who fear they might lose their jobs do not spend as much money as they did when they felt their jobs were secure. People who have solid jobs but fear the government is going to increase their taxes in a never ending quest to reconstitute diminishing revenues, do not spend as much money as they once did because they know they will need the money to quench big brother's thirst. With people generally pumping less money into the economy for these various reasons, the businesses that remain open contract farther causing more people to lose their jobs, nervous people who keep their jobs to spend even less, and the confidently employed to again cut back in order to satisfy that ever present glint in the tax man's eye. Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.

This pattern is undisputed.

It is within this downward economic spiral that Dan Scripps is able to do his admirable best at focusing on peripheral items as if the tempest was occurring in someone else's back yard. How could he better prove such unbending focus than by suggesting a $145 million fee increase on citizens and businesses for waste disposal? The fee hike amounts to an increase of approximately 3500% with the additional dollars supposedly used by the state to promote recycling. (I don't guess there is any chance the state might abscond with some of these dollars and apply them to different causes like they did with the tobacco settlement money or the feds did with social security.)

In Dan's mind there is no consideration for unintended consequences. It will certainly not promote the extra burning of paper and plastics in burn barrels, will not result in many thousands of couches to be dumped in the back woods, will not increase the number of paper wrappers blowing like aimless tumbleweeds through the streets of Leland, nor will it help in the creation of countless unmonitored personal landfills, for those things are illegal!

Will more items be recycled? Yes. Will more items also be dumped along the highway and burned out back because the punishment for being a good little citizen just got a lot more expensive? Yes. Another thing to consider is how many more jobs will be lost when $145 million additional dollars are sucked out of the pockets of those who do business and live in this state.

Is now the right time to remove from struggling citizens and businesses another $145 million so that Dan Scripps can feel good about himself for attempting to nudge the rest of us toward a more perfect future? Or, would it perhaps be a better time instead for Scripps to walk outside of his fortified office to buy himself a non carp-stained newspaper with current events splashed across the front page?

If there was ever a time not to raise taxes, this is it. If there was ever a time to leave discretionary dollars in the pockets of citizens, this is it. If there was ever a time for politicians to begin to reflect on the total consequences of the edicts they pronounce from on high, this is it. And, if there was ever a time for the voters of Michigan to recognize what they have done by electing a candidate to office who would purposefully perpetuate this disastrous economy for a pet cause, this is it.

Trashing the Earth will have consequences for which this and all future generations will be forced to endure. These consequences, however, will be no more severe than the ones suffered by a state and country forever mired in the muck created by high minded politicians wearing exquisitely adorned blinders. What Scripps has managed to do here is to cook up a scheme that will not only promote unlawful dumping, but will at the same time manage to hurt everyday citizens struggling to make ends meet. Who knows, maybe with a little more time and effort Scripps can come up with a way to make his bill harmful to cute little wiener dog puppies.

I have a question Dan, and maybe you can bear with me on this. Why don't the overlords in Lansing make substantive changes to our state's oppressive business choking regulations before they start touting additional legislation that will make it even harder for businesses to recover?

Could it be any more obvious that the leaders in Lansing are either not keeping up on current events or have simply decided they can live with what is happening because it promotes their greater cause? There is no other plausible explanation for this sort of legislation at this point in history.

A carp wrapped in newsprint knows better.

Shut Up and Serve Us Fries!

2009-11-10T18:18:00.002-05:00

So said the affluent environmentalist Grosse Pointe tourists to the otherwise unemployed locals north of the Mackinac Bridge.

A Trip to Mexico

2009-11-10T12:23:00.006-05:00

I will be unable to post on much of anything until later today, so I thought you might enjoy a short essay my daughter wrote about a mission trip she took to Mexico last spring. As a 17 year old high school junior, I think she learned a lesson about the benefits of growing up on American soil and of living in a nation founded with Judeo/Christian values by men who dared to look tyranny in the eye.

It was April 2, 2009 and my mission’s team of 12 started out from Detroit Metro Airport. Two flights and seven long hours later, I was in Mazatlan, Mexico, packed into an old, rundown van and heading for the orphanage, Rancho de los Niños. It didn’t take long for me to appreciate this new world, and even shorter still, was the length of time it took for me to realize how oddly beautiful Mexico was. We passed many houses, all were squat, windowless, and concrete—most were adorned with graffiti and shaded only by the occasional palm tree. In the yards were chickens, cows, and wild, half-starved dogs. There were piles of rubble, streets lined with windswept trash, and everything was seemingly neglected. Despite these discordant images, Mazatlan was simply captivating.

Even after herding goats and the first of many cockroaches out of our accommodations (a goat pen) at Rancho de los Niños, the thrill known only to travelers was thus made apparent to me. Even after discovering our shower, a mere pipe sticking out from the wall, and the iguana infestation, I knew that the mission’s trip was to be the greatest experience of my life. Then, when I could have burst from happiness, when my trip was surely at its peak, my life was given purpose—purpose that took the shape of 23 little children. Despite the language barrier, we were soon swept up in games and laughter. Play, I quickly discovered, is universal. Before long, amongst the Crayola and Nerf toys the team had brought for the children, I met my life-changer. Inni was an energetic, loving and beautiful five-year-old girl—unwanted and consequently abandoned to the orphanage.

Our world is full of suffering and little Inni, an orphan in a third world country, has known her fair share. Living in America, it was easy to forget the lives outside my own and to take for granted all that I had. Never again.

Inni once led me to her area, a little bunk beside many others. It was clad in hand-me-down blankets and covered with clothes she had outgrown long before. With a secretive smile and a single finger pressed to her lips, she pulled up her mattress and showed me her most prized possession. It was a coloring book, faded and ripped, left by the mission’s team the previous year. This beautiful girl, content with a single coloring book yet deserving of so much more, broke my heart. I had gone to Mexico hoping to comfort orphans, but when I cried for Inni that day, while looking at her coloring book, she was the one to hug me.

For the next two weeks, in between other projects the team undertook, Inni and I grew very close. I never could have imagined, however, the magnitude of strength it took to say goodbye to her. Sadly on April 11, a day too soon in coming, it was time to leave. Before Mexico, I always thought traveling meant seeing the world: going places few have, the sites, the beautiful locations. Now, when I think back to Mexico, I seldom think of beautiful landscaping. Instead, my thoughts stray to Inni and the other children. Perhaps traveling isn’t so much where you go, but who you meet and the friends you make. Yes, I got to see exotic flowers and stunning beaches; however, scenery, and the memory of it, is fleeting and hardly life-altering. That aged coloring book, smashed under a mattress, was more beautiful than any view, and even more beautiful still, were the little hands that held it.

She hopes to return this year as well.

The Europe We Adore: Parenting Edition

2009-11-09T23:10:00.003-05:00

I know that some children slip through the cracks and that they are the least able victims to protect themselves against abuse. It saddens me that any child would ever be abused by anyone.

Yet, parents have children, and as far as I'm concerned, until God creates a decent replacement for Mom and Dad, parents will provide children with the best chance for success and love. When a child is abused, by all means, get the child out of the situation.

I'm not certain, however, that I've ever seen a more misguided gaggle of overbearing nutjobs like the nannystate buttinskys they have in the UK right now. A few weeks ago I highlighted a story in which parents were having their small children removed from their home because the state feared the younger children might become obese.

This week three more stories come out of the UK. Daily Mail links all.

First, a mother is tracked down by police for threatening her misbehaving children with a slap at the checkout counter at the market. Her punishment is that she will be under the watchful eye of the government until her youngest child, a four years old daughter, graduates from school in another 14 years.

Next, the Scottish government at the last minute has denied the approval of a marriage between two people because the pregnant bride-to-be may not be intelligent enough. Is the state thinking that an unmarried mother is better for the child than a married one, or are her fears justified that the state may indeed plan to take the child after birth?

Finally, the NHS has again stuck their nose in the business of a woman 11 weeks pregnant because the apartment she is living in is under construction. (Perhaps she should simply lie and thereby comfort the social workers by saying that she plans on aborting. You know, no harm, no foul.)

These stories are frightening if they come at all close to mirroring the normal state of things in the UK. And this is the European model we are looking to emulate?

Teaching Carpools in Driver's Safety

2009-11-09T19:47:00.003-05:00

There are few words that can accurately describe the idiocy of some of the people that we intentionally elect to public office. Seriously, these guys ran for office against live people! I could see them getting elected if they were running against a can of Spam, John Corzine, or a hookworm, but against a serious candidate? How does it occur?

If we tossed darts out of an airplane we would have a 90% chance of hitting someone with a bigger clue than Rep. Bert Johnson (D-City In Ruin) has ever had in his life, and a 100% chance of hitting someone with a smaller ego than Dan Scripps (D-Stryker's back pocket.)

Their latest brainchild is a bill that would make it necessary for driving schools to emphasize to their students the importance of carpooling, the benefits of fuel efficient cars, how to maximize fuel efficiency while driving, and recycling fuels and parts. I wonder if they will also propose in subsequent bills that driving schools teach their students that big gas guzzlers, while less fuel efficient, are a lot safer than driving Smart Cars.

Are they thinking that there is no other arm of government that currently toots the horn of fuel efficiency and energy conservation? As I commented over at The Blog Prof's (who gets the h/t on this,) Michigan is a state that is supposedly trying to find duplications in its operations so that it can cut the fat and operate more efficiently. Now we have dipsticks like Johnson and Scripps intentionally going out and finding new ways in which to duplicate the efforts of our benevolent government. Who are the slow learners here? Of course any added costs necessary to this enlightened learning experience will be passed on to prospective drivers (or most likely their parents) and taxpayers in this sour economy where nobody has enough money, especially parents with teenage children.

I like this planet and I like saving money, but I'm particularly fond of my own two teenagers (sans the not picking up bit,) and I don't think I'm too far off base when I say that driver's safety is called driver's SAFETY for a reason, and I want instruction in driver's safety class to emphasize safety, not the flavor of the month environmentalism.

Scripps and Johnson must think that all of this is necessary, I suppose, because slow learning kids have failed miserably in picking up on things in the environmentally charged classrooms of today, and because knuckle dragging parents such as myself are not fully capable of prioritizing our kids' at home learning opportunities as well as Misters Johnson and Scripps would like. Maybe we could get these cranial marvels to mandate that kids pick up after themselves too.

Do you think that teens will absorb and adopt the cost and health benefits of carpooling better than they have the anti-smoking message they've been hearing from the government and parents since they were about two? (Particularly with smokes at about $8.00 per pack and the coolest President evah avoiding all cameras when he lights up.)

If looking at gruesome pictures of lip tumors and blackened cancerous lungs isn't enough to get teens and a president from using tobacco, and watching videos of people torn apart because they were driving too fast isn't enough to get them to slow down, how on God's green Earth is cajoling teenage NASCAR fans into slowing down to gain an extra three miles per gallon going to do the trick? One thing is certain, turning off the gruesome video in favor of an air pressure gauge slide show is going to be riveting.

If you cannot do it for the safety, do it for the planet!

Despite A Muslim Imam's Praise, Hasan Does Not Represent Muslim Faith

2009-11-09T12:55:00.003-05:00

The Muslim terrorist who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood last week and who does not represent the Muslim faith, has been praised by an American imam who also does not represent the Muslim faith.

From the USAToday:

The personal website for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two Sept. 11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the website for Anwar Aulaqi, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three Sept. 11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press the website was Aulaqi's. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence collection.

Aulaqi said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

Hopefully the unIslamic examples given by people like Hasan, Aulaqi, and Muhammad himself can be effectively interpreted for the rest of us by the all-knowing Janet Napolitano.

"This was an individual who does not represent the Muslim faith."

Which, I'm certain, will make those thirty plus people still recovering from gunshots feel a whole lot better.

Conyers Wants some Head Knocking

2009-11-09T11:16:00.003-05:00

In 1965, when John Conyers first took office in the House of Representatives, Lyndon B. Johnson was President of the United States. Conyers still has a soft spot in his heart for those early years when his future wife Monica was in diapers and members of his own political party were trashing the Civil Rights Act.

Conyers remains sentimental over that political period and wishes that Barack Obama would be more like LBJ when it comes to pushing through legislation that will be disastrous to America, just like most of LBJ's Great Society initiatives were.

"the president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson's book ... and start knocking heads together."

Perhaps so. And then the rest of America could spend another fifty years trying to undo all the damage. John Conyers is so blind that he cannot look at the city of Detroit today and see the damage that the good intentions of government programs can do.

Then again, what can you say about a politician whose wisest political move ever may have been in the asking for his future wife's hand? I presume that is what keeps those visions of "knocking heads together" so fresh.

New Education Fellowship in Michigan

2009-11-06T16:48:00.002-05:00

I read with interest an article on Mlive/Bay City Times concerning this.

Public education received a boost today when Governor Granholm announced a new Michigan teaching fellowship thanks in part to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

The new teaching fellowship, valued at $16.7 million, will benefit 20,000 public school students in the state. The program will retrain 240 new math and science teachers to teach in middle and high schools across the state that need teachers in those subjects.

“Over a period of five years, almost 20,000 Michigan public school students will receive high-quality education in science, technology, engineering and math from these new teachers,” said Granholm in a release.

Unless these teachers will somehow be tethered to the state of Michigan I don't know how she can say that 20,000 in state students will benefit from these new teachers. However much I like to see foundations support education, I'm afraid this endeavor will do little good to increase the quality of education in this state, even though it might make receiving a college education more affordable to a significant number of fellowship recipients.

Unfortunately, I don't see this money making a dime's worth of difference in a system that demands that decisions be made in Lansing and DC.

We have a broken system folks, and the fact that 80% of all teachers are excellent and the fact that the goal of every school district in the state is to do a good job of educating our youth, will make absolutely no difference until those teachers and those school districts regain control. Teachers become tired of bucking a system that makes it hard for them to teach. Administrators become tired of dealing with the same problems every day because permanent solutions to most problems are not allowed. Too many good students are kept from learning because numbskull deviants and disruptors are almost impossible to remove from the classroom. It really is remarkable that half the kids do get a decent education.

Give districts the power to toss out the 20% of teachers that stink, allow effective teachers to receive merit raises, let districts boot out 20% of the students that have no desire to be in the classroom other than to disrupt (without financially punishing the districts,) and give local parents the ability to shape vocational curriculums and set policy. I could go on and on and on, and so could everyone else.

In my humble opinion, the $16 million would be better spent in legal efforts to change the way things now operate than to inject more teachers into a failed system.

A Bit More on Fort Hood Shooting

2009-11-06T10:11:00.002-05:00

It is being reported by the AP (via Michelle Malkin) that Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout Muslim, shouted "Allahu Akbar" before he began shooting down infidel victims.

It also said that

Military officials were trying to piece together what may have pushed Hasan, an Army psychiatrist trained to help soldiers in distress, to turn on his comrades. Cone said the 39-year-old Hasan was not known to be a threat or risk.

Figuring out exactly what might be the seed behind a devout Muslim screaming out 'Allah is great' before gunning down as many unarmed soldiers as possible, is going to be difficult to put a finger on.

The Associated Press can be roughly translated to mean a collection of obtuse asses.