Government spending to make the economy grow is like a pilot flying on instruments not wanting to believe his attitude gauge. He’s sure the gauge is wrong and he is not inverted. Right up until the moment he climbs into the ground.

The economic gauge is telling us the same thing and they keep pulling back on the stick hoping to gain more altitude when I’ll they are really doing is pushing us over into a nose dive to death.

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Every so often I amuse myself with a nugget of thought.  Just a post to keep some of them around.

• It’s always funny when someone tries to use their resume as a debate point. Had a “Conservative” History Prof that has taught some Legal History classes try this on me this evening during a debate on ConLaw. I wonder if he would fall victim to that ruse himself if Laurence Tribe, actual ConLaw Prof at Harvard, played it on him?
  Yeah, I don’t think so either. That ruse is a sure sign of a weak argument
  Not sure if that falls under the debating fallacies of “Ad verecundiam” (argument that appeals to revered authority) or “Ad misericordiam” (argument that appeals to pity)
• Your freedom to yell through a bullhorn or bang a drum ends were my window panes begin.
• Just because the MSM in deciding “All The News They See Fit To Print” does not report it a tree still did fall in the forest.
• Did Cain harass those women? No idea. But it is funny to see the Press convulsed in vapors and fainting spells because according to them Herman is black and the women are white with blonde hair so therefore Conservatives would hate him.
  I wonder if those same reporters happened to notice Clarance Thomas’s wife, Ginni?
  Sure wish the left would stop with their incessant race-baiting.
• Watching you try to form cogent thoughts is like watching someone wolf down a bowl of alphabet soup and attempting to arrange the mush of letters into words as they pour forth from their bowels in a stream of explosive diarrhea.
• What they really want is to turn the Founding Fathers into their own Fantasy Football team but on an ad hoc basis bringing players off the bench as needed and sending them to the showers when they hold positions that don’t match.
• When reaching out to turn off the alarm is like swimming in a sea of molasses you sure wish that the snooze button had a half hour option.
• Gotta love lemonade that is tart enough to make your temples pucker
• It is hard to suppress the laughter when you see someone sprain their brain.
• So how many “When did you stop beating your wife” type questions can Joy ask? Tune in (or not) to find out.
• Together they might generate enough brain power to light a match
• Pondering the random intersections and interconnections of life.
• I have repeatedly pointed out how they and Ron are so selective in their memory of the founders that the gerry-mandered borders they create around them would make a California congressional district look downright sane.
• Paulista’s just continue to show they can’t play long. Instead of staying in the game with bunts and singles advancing runners arond the bases they want to keep swinging themselves into the dirt trying to reach the fence.
• For my misguided friends that follow the AZ Cardinals. Who needs Social Security or a 401k when you can fund your retirement by always by always betting against them.
• thinks it is adorable that those on the right that lampoon Obama’s “Hope & Change” rhetoric are willing to buy the snake-oil called the FairTax while completely ignoring the reality that a current Congress cannot bind a future Congress.
• Probed by the Government, Bankers or Aliens it’s all the same. They get you in the end
• “punching small holes in the scrotum rather than making an incision” does not make the procedure sound any better
• Many of those standing at the Bully Pulpit use the Pulpit to be Bullies.
• Compared to Obama, Jimmy Carter was an optimist
• If OWS really wants a revolution they just might want to consider which group is armed. Tea Party or OWS?
• Billboard for the UofA along I-10 in Phoenix and next to an “Adult Bookstore” saying this is “Wildcat Country”. They need to rename it the “Pussycat Lounge”
• Religion is not in the business of proving anything. Religion is based on Faith. The problem with modern Science is that we have been educated to believe that science proves anything. It does not. Science only establishes current understanding.
• It is to laugh. To be accused from the “left” of being a “tea-bagger” and from the “right” of being a “lib” and that I ought to move to Castro’s Cuba if I don’t like the States.
• Voice mail should not be a 6.5 minute monologue.

An old liberal friend of mine posted a link to this article on FB

“IRS Cuts Would Mean Loss Of Essential Services, $4 Billion In Revenue”

And commented the link with

this doesnt seem smart as much as i hate the irs

My response:

My take from this is that it yet again demonstrates that Washington does not get it.

IRS Budget in 2008 was 11.4 Billion
In 2010 it was 12.1 Billion (increase of 700 Million)
Proposed for 2012 is 13.4 Billion (increase of 1.2 Billion)

So from 2008 to the proposed 2012 budget is an increase of 2 Billion.

So supposedly if only INCREASING their budget by 600 Million rather that 1.2 Billion will lead to catastrophe and the world coming to and end. Get real.

He showed his Big Government default Liberal mindset with

It seems stupid to decrease funding when we get such a high return on investment. I don’t know why we would fuss with an agency that makes money for the gov. I’m all for cutting but this seems like cutting off our nose… I don’t think anyone thinks the world will end. Well, not over this anyway…

So I tried to show how the Government just does not have a clue how things work in the real world

funding is not being DECREASED it is just not being INCREASED as much but it is still an INCREASE.

The current rate of inflation in the US is 3.8%. Boosting the IRS Budget from 2011’s $12.1 Billion to $13.4 Billion is an increase of 10.7% Increasing it only by $600 million is still an increase of 4.9%. Seems that 4.9% is still larger than 3.8% so the IRS would still be getting a budget increase that exceeds the rate of inflation.

The problem is that their budget is basically on auto-pilot increase year to year due to the nonsense called “Base-line” budgeting. The real world does not operate like that, especially in a recession.

Reminds me the last time we had a real estate meltdown with the Savings & Loan debacle.

I was working for Valley National Bank (later bought by BankOne and then Chase) at the time. The President and CEO of the Bank announced to the operations side of the Bank that our budgets were frozen at the current level for the next two years and that any new purchases, hires, raises, etc… would have to be made to fit within that cap.

Well, finding efficiencies was the name of the game.

One of the projects I helped spearhead was to do a drop to bottom review of the existing technology utilization within the Bank.

Our team went into every Department to evaluate how the current technology was being used and interview every employee within that department. We ended up taking more powerful systems away from Managers and swapping them out with their Assistants who were the actual power users. We even identified that two or three people could share a system or printer and thereby pull one or two systems back to Equipment Services so that they could be reallocated within the Bank thereby saving on purchasing additional equipment.

The Bank emerged from that time very Healthy with our Branch system intact and in fact we had created Profit Centers within the Operations side of the Bank that generated our “own” money. Since we had a large Branch system all over the State we created a new company called “BancStar”. All of our Courier Vans were transferred to this new company and rebranded with the new company’s logo. We created a new piece of mapping software to allow us to plot routes. We then sold time in our Vans to other Banks to handle their intra-Branch mail since we would certainly be passing by their branches while driving to our own. They got rid of a cost since we could do it cheaper then they could and we offset a lot of or expense in the delivery of our own mail, etc…

When Mitch Daniels became Governor of Indiana he faced a $1 Billion deficit. He turned that around to a $700 Million dollar surplus by doing the same type things that w did at the Bank. Look for real efficiencies and “cut” where things be could cut. One thing they did that I thought was brilliant was he had someone go out and mark the tires on vehicles in the States fleet. Then like the Meter Maid they went back a month later to see what vehicles had been used and which had not. The excess vehicles were sold off. In fact the Governor personally sold off vehicle #1,000 with at the time of the link below the state had identified 2,000 Vehicles it was not using fully and could get rid of.

http://www.votesmart.org/speech_detail.php?sc_id=184301&keyword&phrase&contain

Every level of Government is rife with that kind of waste.

Yes, there will be push back from the affected Departments. We had that too at the Bank and knowing that going in we setup a process to resolve it. We would give our recommendations to the Department Manager and he could comment. We would take his comment under consideration and submit a revised recommendation to him in case we had missed something. If the Manager still did not agree the resolution was kicked all the way upstairs to the President of the Bank by-passing all the Middle Management layers. We insisted on that so that we knew we had buy in from above. The very first Department we evaluated rejected our initial recommendations out of hand (we had been very gentle) and upon review we decided to go with what we really wanted to adjust. The Manager pitched a fit. The review went to the Presidents office and the next thing we knew that entire Department had been disbanded and the employees transferred around the Bank.

Once that word got out we did not have another Manager question our recommendations. I always wondered if that first Department we reviewed had been picked to send that very message.

It is so funny when someone doubles and triples down on their inaccuracies rather then admit they were simply mistaken (not that they were even wrong). Finally rather than admit that were even mistaken and then finally wrong they delete their original post so as to not have to endure the painful truth.

When faced with someone like that is fun to box and bat them like a cat with a ball of yarn.

But then that is what screen captures are for…

Frank and Sharon’s inanity on the Nearly Famous Barry Young Fan Page

We have a spending problem not a taxing problem

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One of my clients here in Phoenix is a prominent Immigration Attorney, Nic Suriel.  This video is from 2010 when he was making an appearance on the local Fox Affiliate to discuss Immigration in general and SB1070 in particular.

Nic and I have had some good discussions on the topic.  He is always insightful as he brings both a Personal as well as a Professional perspective to the debate.

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FYI, here is my personal take on SB1070 that was written a few months before this interview.  While I support a “High Walls” approach I also acknowledge and agree with the point that Nic drives home in the interview of the need for “Wider Gates”

Last night Ron put on display one of my biggest criticisms of him

Ron Paul is completely flummoxed when pressed on working with a divided Congress (see the 1:28 mark). Besides his raise the draw bridges and legalize heroin and crack cocaine stances this is his biggest problem. He has no record of working with others so he has no answer on how he would accomplish anything.

One would think that his debate prep would at some point have prepared him to actually address this weakness with a strong answer. But then you would be wrong.

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$1 Trillion in cuts to government spending sounds like a lot.

Spread it over 10 years you get $100 Billion. Still sounds big.

The budget for 2011 is $3.7 Trillion. So the cut represent only 2.6%.

The budget goes up each year so these “cuts” will represent an ever shrinking percentage.

If you make $100k a year this would be like cutting $7 a day from your expenses.

Wow, what an incredible sacrifice.

Frustrating when we still eat our own due to a failure to realize a re-ordering of actual reality (when they are too busy looking for an unrealistic paradigm shift to a different reality) in the offing.

Ron Paul’s position on legalizing drugs is so far beyond pollyannaish. To equate the use of drugs (and he does not limit himself to just Pot but includes drugs like heroin) to someone drinking soda, eating chips and other “fattening” foods the government Nanny state wants to control is over the border delusional.

The person that uses heroin is not able to function in society. If you can’t function you can’t hold down a job. You can’t hold down a job you have no income to pay for your heroin (illegal now or legal in Ron Paul’s universe). No income you resort to theft to pay for the habit.

Drug use is not the “personal choice” issue that Ron Paul wants to pretend it is by his obfuscating the issue.

A friend of mine who is a Ron Paul supporter defends Paul’s stance with:

So convict them for theft. Let’s stop trying to decide what’s “best” for the little people and return to a government that does what it is supposed to do; protect people’s Life and Property and secure their Liberty. Anything else is just elitist collectivism

Which of course does not address the issue. They do get convicted for theft. But without the addiction there would have been no theft.

That is why Paul’s position is delusional. It’s not the same thing as eating a Twinkie.

Paulista’s shout from the top of their lungs that the sole purpose of Government to to “protect people’s Life and Property and secure their Liberty”.

Drug use ruins lives, damages property and results in loss of liberty. Not just of the Drug user but of Society at large.

No Twinkie ever did that

Of course the Paul supporters respond that

“the federal government has no Constitutional authority to regulate what we choose to ingest.  If it did, ObamaCare would be a breeze to defend.”

While I have no issue with them (and am in agreement) on the Federal/State issue in general in this regard their argument falls apart.  Heroin is not a domestic product.  It had to be imported.  Federal jurisdiction would of course cover the control of the importation of a processed product like Heroin. Federal enforcement in this regard is a text book example of the proper use of the Commerce Clause in Article 1, Section 8. “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations…”

While I “could” see the elimination of “drug” crimes and not prosecuting the drug user there is actually a good reason to prosecute these crimes. As I pointed out above the drug addict will resort to theft, etc in order to feed and supply their drug addiction.  Without the addiction there is no theft.  Therefore, if we can treat the addiction of the addict we can go a long away toward the Government responsibility that the Paul-bots agree on “protect people’s Life and Property”.  Plus, a conviction of theft is far more damaging to the addict’s ability to become a productive member of society once the addiction is under control then is a conviction for drug use.

That’s why there are Drug Courts to work as a diversion.

Where the Fed’s should certainly prosecute with a vengeance are the fiends that import and distribute across state lines these poisons that wreck huge chunks of our economy and lives.

This article about the rise of heroin use in Russia was interesting and directly on point.

Ivanov, who did not say which country Russia had replaced as the top heroin user, estimated that heroine addiction cost Russia 3 percent of its annual gross domestic product, which in 2008 totalled about $1.7 trillion, Reuters reports.

“Our people are dying. Some 90 percent of drug addicts in Russia are on Afghan heroin,” Ivanov said. “This is a threat to national security and to our country’s society.”
In a sign of its concern about Afghanistan, Moscow last month agreed to increase support for resupply shipments for NATO’s operations in Afghanistan across its territory, despite differences with the United States over its war with Georgia last summer, NATO expansion eastwards and missile defence, Reuters reports.
“It is time the world community got serious about the Afghan drug problem,” Reuters quotes Ivanov as saying. Poppy crops should be sprayed with defoliants and farmers offered incentives to cease production.

The Sale of drugs and the use of drugs are not victimless crimes.

So tired of the lie that the US Budget was in balance in 2000 and on it’s way to paying off the debt if it had not been for George Bush the Terrible.

Guess Tim Geithner in addition to being unable to use Turbo Tax can’t check his own Treasury Department’s website to make sure his Boss’s Teleprompter does not make Obama tell a lie.

Pray tell. Which of these Clinton Era Budgets ends in surplus and in what year does the trend line for the Debt start to head down?

Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury.  Considering the government’s fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton’s budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here’s the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:

The horror that is a the North Korean Nazi-Socialist state. Mao, Stalin, etc… were free thinking reformers by comparison.

Watch more free documentaries

The US Department of Justice certainly seems to have either lost their focus (I doubt it) or more probably (as I believe) they are simply announcing their new direction which is in simple contradiction to their actual purpose.

Consider this question.

Q: What is the difference between constitutional law, statutory law and common law?

A: There are three basic types of law in the United States:

1. Constitutional law is the law in the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions. It includes such fundamental rights as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression etc. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the United States. No law can be enacted that contravenes the provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
2. Statutory law is law enacted by legislature.  Congress, state and municipalities all have legislative bodies that make laws.  It is created through a formal lawmaking process and codified in official text. ( Example: When the Legislature passes a bill, it is a Statutory Law.)
3. Common law, began in England when law was derived from common practices.  Common law includes “judge-made laws” and relies on judicial precidents (case law).  Judges, thus, in their decisions are bound by precedent: the rulings of other judges in similar cases decided earlier. All the states except for Louisiana are common law states.

What has the US Justice Department done to indicate that they are no longer focused on enforcing and prosecuting the Constitutional Laws of the United States?

Now while publications are updated and changed (to include websites).  The designs and elements that are chosen “should ” reflect the philosophy of the organization.  The Justice Department recently did a makeover of their site.

Old Banner:

New Banner

It’s hard to see but the words at the top of the new banner say:

“The common law is the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people.”

With the transition from English law, which had common law crimes, to the new legal system under the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited ex post facto laws at both the federal and state level, the question was raised whether there could be common law crimes in the United States. It was settled in the case of United States v. Hudson and Goodwin, 11 U.S. 32 (1812), which decided that federal courts (where the US Justice Department plies it’s trade) had no jurisdiction to define new common law crimes, and that there must always be a (constitutional) statute defining the offense and the penalty for it.

So… The Justice Department has no jurisdiction bringing Common Law cases so why have a quote about Common Law featured on the Public Entrance to your site?

Where did the phrase come from?

Well, it DID NOT come from someone subject to the Laws of the United States nor even someone affiliated with the Courts or the Justice System. It is atributed to C. Wilfred Jenks, a Brit and a former Director-General of the International Labour Organization from 1970 to 1973.  International Labour!?

Where there no good quotes to be found from US Judges or former heads of the DOJ?

What does the clamor for Electic Cars like the Nissan Leaf from eco-nuts in California portend for your ability to blow out your coif, play your Xbox or stream a movie from Netflix.

Yes, California has addressed some of the real and the market manipulation causes to the rolling blackouts that affected the state in 2000 and 2001 but have they built enough power plants or built the infastructure to accomodate a fleet of electric cars?

I know that headline is repetitive.

The New York Times blogging Economist and noted Cat fancier Paul Krugman took after the “Right-Wing” in general and Palin in particular as being a root of cause for the sick individual that shot Rep Giffords.

Krugman should have stopped at his opening line.  “We don’t have proof yet…”  Anytime someone then presses on despite warning you up front that they are going to proceed to talk out of their ass you can be sure that the smell generated from their thought processes will carry a familiar stench.

Krugman proceeded to jump in the pile of shit that he was wanting to rub the Conservative nose in by daring to put the following words to paper.

“But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.”

Hey Paul, let me draw your attention to another missive that you conjured from the depths of your schizophrenic mind.  This time from 9/10/2008.

Notice anything about the photo you used?

Maybe you do suffer from a ?

My advice to you Paul…  Stick to economics.  That way you can limit being so wrong to just a single subject. Or better yet.  Maybe you could get a gig

Collection of old Cartoons by the creator of Calvin & Hobbes. 

http://ignatz.brinkster.net/cbillart.html

Loved this one…