March 17, 2010

Rush Limbaugh responds to 'I Will Not Comply'

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 7:25 PM

Here's what "El Rushbo" had to say during the first hour of his show today:

You know, there are a lot of people who are starting to say (John Hood is one from the CarolinaJournal.com) if they pass this using the Slaughter solution -- in other words, literally shredding the Constitution. If they do this in a lawless way, then he's not going to comply. He's simply not going to comply and he's urging everybody else not to comply. We don't have to comply with illegally passed bills. We don't have to comply with things which are unconstitutional.  For example, maybe we can just "deem" our tax returns to have been filed.  But we don't actually file 'em. We just "deem" our taxes to have been paid.

Not sure what he's talking about? Read John Hood's Daily Journal column, "I Will Not Comply."

Like what you read? Become a Facebook fan of I Will Not Comply.

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Follow the Leader--no matter what

Posted by Dr. Karen Y. Palasek at 5:45 PM

In a Bizarro world-like experiment disguised as a French TV show called The Game of Death, contestants repeat the Yale torturer/electrocution experiments of the 1960's, unaware that it is an experiment in seeing how far people will go in obeying an authority figure. In this case, the authority figure is a glitzy game show host. No desert drab, machine guns, or other threatening presences compel contestants to comply. The plan: Contestants are instructed to zap Game of Death players with an electric shock when they answer incorrectly. The shocks are fake, as are the responses of the actor/players when the shock is administered. But contestants don't know that. As the voltage gets higher, the host insists that Contestants follow the rules, ratchet up the juice, and continue responding to wrong answers with electric jolts. Actor/players scream in pain, pass out, and in at least one instance appear to die as a result of the lethal 460 volt electric shock that is finally applied.

Of 80 contestants, only 16 walked away from the freakish 'show' and refused to cooperate. One 'stayer' even had relatives tortured by the Nazis. She or he didn't want to hurt the player, but elected not to spoil the show by stopping. Thus WTHIWWTP???!!!!

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Another unintended consequence of Obamacare

Posted by George Leef at 4:41 PM

It will deter medical innovation, argues Cato's tireless expert on this, Michael Cannon, in this podcast.

Old political story -- a few visible benefits, massive invisible costs.

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Will Etheridge stick with constituents, or stick it to 'em?

Posted by Rick Henderson at 3:53 PM

Under the Dome reports on a new survey from Public Policy Polling (PDF link) finding that 53 percent of respondents from Rep. Bob Etheridge's 2nd Congressional District don't like Obamacare; only 37 percent do support the Democrat's health plan.  

Moreover, the seven-term Democrat's vote (or "deem") may have consequences attached: 47 percent said they would be less likely to re-elect Etheridge if he supports Obamacare; a mere 36 percent said they would be more likely to give Etheridge an eighth term if he backs the president, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Etheridge has said he's undecided about the fate of the bill.

 In Rep. Heath Shuler's 11th District, the Dems' plan loses 35-57, and Shuler has said he opposes the bill.

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Kudos to Bev Perdue (There, I said it.)

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 3:39 PM

I am pleased that Bev Perdue will continue the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey. If used correctly (or at all), the survey results could improve public education in the state.

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Cato expert examines one area in which North Carolina has the right policy

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 3:11 PM

The Cato Institute's Chris Edwards has issued a new report (pdf link here) urging states to follow North Carolina's lead in banning collective bargaining in the public sector.

Besides raising compensation costs, unions reduce government efficiency in other ways. Unions tend to protect poorly performing workers, they often push for larger staffing levels than required, and they discourage the use of volunteers in government activities. Further, they tend to resist the introduction of new technologies and they create a more rule-laden workplace. In the private sector, businesses can mitigate such union-caused inefficiencies. In response to union demands for higher pay, for example, businesses can substitute capital for labor. Unfortunately, public-sector managers have little incentive or flexibility to make such changes.

4 p.m. update: If you believe North Carolina should maintain its current policy against public-sector collective bargaining, Americans for Prosperity North Carolina wants to hear from you. Follow the link to learn about "Save Right-to-Work in North Carolina."

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Being of the Green

Posted by Dr. Karen Y. Palasek at 11:45 AM

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RomneyCare is failing, so let's take it nationwide!

Posted by George Leef at 11:32 AM

Today's Wall Street Journal includes this excellent article entitled The Failure of RomneyCare by Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute.

Massachusetts is already experiencing the sorts of unintended consequences that we opponents of Obamacare have been raising, such as increasing difficulty in finding a doctor when you need one.

Turner mentions that in Indiana, Governor Mitch Daniels implemented a vastly better plan. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak last fall at the Philadelphia Society meeting in Indianapolis. I think he'd make a terrific opponent for Obama in '12.

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'My Inflation Nightmare'

Posted by Rick Henderson at 10:42 AM

The Contrarian Michael Kinsley awakens from a long domancy and writes a terrific column for The Atlantic asking an obvious question: Why aren't more reputable economists scared to death of a new bout of inflation? Not just the low, double-digit variety of the late 1970s/early 1980s, but Banana Republic-style hyperinflation?

My specific concern is nothing original: it’s just the national debt. Yawn and turn the page here if you’d like. We talk now of trillions, not yesterday’s hundreds of billions. It’s not Obama’s fault. He did what he had to do. However, Obama is president, and Democrats do control Congress. So it’s their responsibility, even if it’s not their fault. And no one in a position to act has proposed a realistic way out of this debt, not even in theory. The Republicans haven’t. The Obama administration hasn’t. Come to think of it, even Paul Krugman hasn’t. Presidential adviser David Axelrod, writing in The Washington Post, says that Obama has instructed his agency heads to go through the budget “page by page, line by line, to eliminate what we don’t need to help pay for what we do.” So they’ve had more than a year and haven’t yet discovered the line in the budget reading “Stuff We Don’t Need, $3.2 trillion.”

There is a way out. It’s called inflation.

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The religious basis for opposing the Wake County school board

Posted by Dr. Terry Stoops at 10:26 AM

Today, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition will hold a briefing at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh. The briefing will deal with research issues, which I will have more to say about later.

I went to the Unitarian Universalist website for information about the briefing and I came across the March 7, 2010 sermon by Rev. Tom Rhodes titled "Are we there yet? Diversity and the Wake County Schools."

The following passage appeared to summarize the religious basis for the opposition:

This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
But in today’s reading, Jesus is asked, “so, who is my neighbor?”

[snip]

Instead, Jesus is saying that our neighbor is really
the person that we wouldn’t normally even talk to,
who is unlike us,
who lives on the wrong side of the tracks.
Our neighbor is the one who sees the color line, even when we claim to be colorblind.

And if Jesus is right, then our “neighborhood schools” should include
students and teachers from all walks of life,
rich and poor, black, brown and white,
liberal and conservative,
because we are one community in Wake County
– and if you can’t see that, then your concept of “neighborhood” is too small!

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Obamacare will lower health care costs

Posted by George Leef at 10:11 AM

In this Freeman piece economics professor William Anderson explains why this sound bite is false.

Lies told for political crusades are the costliest of all.

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Local government employees are smart enough to save e-mail — I think

Posted by David N. Bass at 09:34 AM

When can a local government employee delete an e-mail that's lawfully a public record? Answer: whenever he or she pleases.

That's the gist of a story in The Charlotte Observer this morning. One fascinating anecdote:

"Typically once I read an e-mail, I have the information and I delete it," said Charlotte City Council member Michael Barnes. "It's just not practical for me to catalog each and every e-mail that I get. When I'm asked to give them, if I have them, I do. I don't have anything to hide."

Do these public officials need a tutorial in filing e-mail? It's not that hard. Even more, modern e-mail applications let you search by keyword, so it shouldn't be that hard to turn up e-mails requested for a given subject.

Personally, I keep a running e-mail file of top issues, and then a larger folder for all other e-mail. If a lowly reporter can do it, so can a public servant.

Unless, of course, they really do have something to hide.

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I will not comply — will you?

Posted by John Hood at 08:17 AM

I got a lot of response yesterday from readers of my Carolina Journal Online column “I Will Not Comply.” Many readers asked me to set up a Facebook page so they could sign onto the cause — to announce that they would not comply with any regulations or taxes imposed by any federal health care legislation that violates the U.S. Constitution, either in specific provisions or in the illegal method by which it might be “passed” through the House or Senate.

I set up the “I Will Not Comply” Facebook page last night. It already has more than 500 fans. Will you join them?

UPDATE: After an additional National Review post this morning and then Rush Limbaugh’s decision to read from my column during today’s radio show, the fan number on the Facebook page is now 1,350 a climbing. Jump on the bandwagon! You should comply with my exhortation not to comply! Or something like that.

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The roots of the housing bubble

Posted by George Leef at 08:06 AM

In this American Thinker article Jack Cashill shows that the proximate cause of the housing bubble was the Clinton administration's eagerness to blame a decline in minority home ownership on racial discrimination (and thus reap political dividends by appearing to "get tough" with lenders) when the correct explanation for that phenomenon was cultural -- decreasing numbers of two-parent families.

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Following in Gingrich’s footsteps?

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:07 AM

As for the original Newt, click play below to revisit a key point from his featured remarks at the John Locke Foundation’s 20th anniversary dinner in January.

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Will tackles the inflation temptation

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:06 AM

Just 18 years of 4 percent inflation would cut currency's value in half. Furthermore, governments have neither the skill to precisely calibrate inflation at 4 percent nor the will to hold it there. But as an alternative to tax increases that would extinguish economic growth, or to spending cuts that would extinguish political careers, inflation—the surreptitious, slow-motion repudiation of debt—may look to elected officials to be the prudent, or least imprudent, policy.

Briefly pausing in his campaign for a vast new health-care entitlement that would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars over the next decade, Barack Obama recently created a commission to suggest deficit-reduction measures. The commission's Democratic co-chair, Erskine Bowles, knows bankruptcy: He was on General Motors' board of directors, a.k.a. the Board of Bystanders, as GM went bankrupt. The commission is supposed to submit its ideas after November's elections, naturally, but it could issue a seven-word recommendation right now: Stop doing almost everything you are doing.

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Food lines in Venezuela — truly shocking!

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:05 AM

None of us should be surprised to read the following opening to a Business Week article about life with Chavez:

Caracas — It's 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas' San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fernández tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. "How dare you tell me I can't have one of the larger bags?" she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.

Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. "I am so fed up with these food shortages," Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. "People get desperate and start behaving like animals."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's response to the food shortages: find a scapegoat, in this case supermarket owners.

Ah, yes, the scapegoat tactic. Socialists prefer it to the truth: price controls — in any sector — cause problems.

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Alternatives to the four-year college plan

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:04 AM

College tuition and fees are up 92% since 2000. Is it worth the cost? Highly educated workers earn more, though pay raises have barely kept up with inflation. They have more job security, too.

Regular readers of this forum have known for years that college is oversold, but those who missed Jenna Ashley Robinson’s recent presentation to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society might want to revisit some of the latest evidence.

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Those evil insurance companies

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 07:03 AM

The article’s second page highlights this quote: “The insurance companies have done harm to the economic well-being of the American people.”

Casting insurers as villains in the midst of the health-care reform debate? I wonder why Pelosi would do that.

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New Carolina Journal Online features

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 06:56 AM

The latest Carolina Journal Online exclusive features Anthony Greco's CarolinaJournal.tv lead story on the Republican primary in the N.C. Senate District 9 race. Watch the report by clicking play below.

John Hood's Daily Journal examines problems associated with North Carolina's Escheat Fund.

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Latest dispatches from the campaign trail

Posted by David N. Bass at 06:30 AM

• U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-7th, says he’ll vote no on health care reform. McIntyre will face one of three GOP opponents in the fall.


• Public Policy Polling finds that Cal Cunningham and Ken Lewis are gaining on Elaine Marshall.


• Health care protesters target Bob Etheridge. Like McIntyre, three Republicans are vying to face Etheridge in the fall.


• Voters oppose healthcare reform in two of N.C.’s most competitive congressional districts.


• Big surprise! U.S. Sen. Richard Burr has nothing to worry about in his primary, according to PPP survey results.


• A dozen sitting county commissioners are pursuing seats in the General Assembly this year, according to the N.C. Association of County Commissioners.

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