Thomas Sowell: Mob Rule Economics

Excerpt: "In 1948, the year I left home, the unemployment rate among black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that for white kids the same ages, which was 10.2 percent. ✧ Over the decades since then, we have gotten used to unemployment rates among black teenagers being over 30 percent, 40 percent or in some years even 50 percent. Such is the price of political 'compassion.' ✧ Whatever the good intentions behind minimum wage laws, what matters are the actual consequences. Many people have ideological, financial or political incentives to obfuscate the consequences."

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Fifteen Things You Probably Do Not Know about Psychopaths

Have you ever worked for someone who you seriously thought might be crazy?  About half of all workers have such an experience within a lifetime.  The other half misses out on one of life's most perplexing and educational opportunities.

The subject is psychopathy.  Knowledge and understanding of psychopathy is now advancing, and at an accelerating rate, after a decades-long period of no growth and slow growth.

Read more at American Thinker
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Malkin: Get To Know the Common Core Marketing Overlords

They’re everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV, The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families to support the beleaguered federal education standards/testing/technology racket. Who’s funding these public relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big Business interests.

Read more at RightWing News

Cripes! There is a pro-Common Core ad smack dab in the middle of this Michelle Malkin anti-Common Core article! (screenshot at 'read more')--bc

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'Boomtown' Special Assails D.C. for 'Extracting' Wealth from Taxpayers

BREITBART: BIG GOVERNMENT - In a blockbuster one-hour investigative special that aired on Fox News' "Hannity" on Friday, Peter Schweizer, Steve Bannon, and Sean Hannity exposed how Washington, D.C. has extracted power and money from the United States into a centralized location to become the country's greatest "boomtown," despite not creating anything. ✧ Schweizer, the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute, highlighted how the permanent political class that relies on lobbying and influence peddling makes more money by "growing the size of government," which leaves no incentive on either side of the aisle to limit government. ✧ As a result, he noted the three richest counties and seven of the top ten wealthiest counties in the nation are in the Washington, D.C. region. The District also consumes the most fine wine in the nation. He asserted the business in Washington is now "not politics" but "money."

Video: Watch Hannity's BoomTown... Read More......

AT: The Purposeful Flooding of America's Heartland

AMERICAN THINKER, 6/22/2011 by Joe Herring - "Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods." (Snip) "Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for "green" political support." Read more at American Thinker... Read More......

Sowell: Blame Pols for Sub-Prime Crisis

American Thinker, August 10, 2007 - Rick Moran wrote,

Leave it to Thomas Sowell, the brilliant economist and conservative thinker, to show us why the housing market is collapsing and why the sub-prime mortgage industry is in crisis:

Attractive and heady phrases like "open space," "smart growth" and the like have accompanied land-use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land. In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth. Construction costs were seldom a major factor, for there was relatively little construction in places with severe building restrictions and skyrocketing home prices.

In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the "affordable housing" that politicians talk about so much.

Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans. The Community Reinvestment Act lets politicians pressure lenders to lend to people they might not lend to otherwise. The same politicians are quick to cry "exploitation" when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk.

The huge losses of subprime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micromanage the economy.

The world markets are being buffeted by this crisis in America - all due to the credit worthiness of many sub prime lenders and the fact that it appears the rash of bankruptcies by homeowners may cause a credit crunch that would slow growth considerably. There are whispers that the Fed will lower interest rates slightly next month to ease some of the pressure. This would be a welcome move.

It would be even more welcome if politicians would ever learn to stop trying to fix something that already works quite well.

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