Apr 24

Federal Employees Are Now so Overpaid that Federal Agencies Set Job Applicant Limits

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Statistically, a federal employee is more likely to die than to quit. Federal employees are paid so much that many hundreds–or even thousands–of applicants now apply for some federal openings, such as openings in the U.S. Postal Service.

In the private sector, this would signal a basic “supply versus demand” solution: wages would be adjusted downward until supply was more equitably balanced with demand. Taxpayers would then get more “government services” for their money.

But supply-and-demand analysis doesn’t seem to apply to government hiring decisions. A 2014 story in the Baltimore Sun revealed that some federal agencies are now (secretly) capping the number of applicants at a given number; say 25. (Those who apply after this secret number is reached are not always told that their applications won’t be considered.)

The Baltimore Sun article is here.

Apr 22

Social Security is a massive transfer from the poor and minorities to whites and the affluent

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Columnist Star Parker is out with a brilliant column today:

Here’s the conclusion of a 2013 study published by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.: “When considered across many decades — historically, currently and in the near future — Social Security redistributes from Hispanics, blacks and other people of color to whites.”

According to the calculations of the authors of the Urban Institute study, for every $100 that white beneficiaries pay in Social Security payroll taxes, they receive $113 in benefits. But blacks receive only $89 in benefits and Hispanics only $58 in benefits for every $100 they pay in taxes.

There are a number of factors contributing to this disparity.

Social Security penalizes those with shorter lifespans. Whereas national life expectancy is 79 years, for blacks it is 74 years. For black males, it is 71 years.

Social Security is biased toward married households rather than singles, because marrieds can take advantage of spousal benefits. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2008, 32 percent of the adult black population was married compared to 56 percent of the adult white population.

Parker adds:

Social Security taxes preclude wealth creation for low-income workers by taxing away the only funds they have available for investing in real retirement savings.

Median white household wealth, according to Pew, is $141,000, contrasted with $13,700 for blacks and $11,700 for Hispanics. The percentage of whites with IRAs or Keogh plans is 35 percent, contrasted with 10 percent for blacks and 11 percent for Hispanics. The percentage of whites with 401(k) plans is 45 percent, contrasted with 24 percent of blacks and 30 percent of Hispanics.

Apr 21

This is What Happens When Governments Fail: Greece Begins Confiscating Cash Held in Local City Bank Accounts.

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Over time, almost every government comes for all money, all freedom, all property, and to kill all who resist. Today’s Greek government is a case in point: for years, Greek politicians have overspent, expanded their jurisdiction, expanded regulations and raised taxes. Now the country is so deep in debt that the central bankers of the European Union are demanding repayment.

Greece has now issued a decree demanding that all local towns and municipalities send all their cash to the central Greek bank for confiscation. The report by Mish Shedlock is here.

This confiscation of local town funds by the Greek central government will cause many towns to default on payments to their city employees. And the central Greek government will soon reach for more funds, including private funds.

And note how markets automatically arise to heal the dumb decisions of governments: Shedlock reports that yields on two-year Greek bonds is now over 28%. Such high rates are indicative that credit in Greece is so hard to come by that those offering bonds must offer to pay exorbitant amounts in exchange for funds.

Apr 18

Two Phenomena That May Be Related: Voters Becoming Overwhelmingly Libertarian, Democrats Becoming Old and Tired

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Economist John C. Goodman is out with an interesting column stating that libertarian voters outnumber conservatives and liberals. Specifically, “38 percent of the public identifies as “conservative” and 24 percent as “liberal” in the latest [Gallup] poll,” while at least one major [2006 Cato Institute/Zogby] poll found that fully 59 percent of Americans say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”

This is interesting because both the “conservative” and “liberal” camps at one time included large numbers of libertarians. However, in recent election cycles, libertarian-leaning voters have moved toward the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party–which once championed privacy, limits on police and surveillance, and due process rights–has moved more exclusively into the area of old-school socialism and simple economic redistribution. Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch is out with a column asking “Why Are the Democrats So Old and Tired?” Welch notes that

If there was to be a Tea Party-style wave of contested Democratic primaries (and there won’t be any time soon), it would likely not be on the issues of drug policy or surveillance (alas!), but rather income inequality, Robin Hood taxes, and jacking up the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Apr 18

FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials — for decades.

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The Washington Post is out with a report that the FBI’s Forensic experts falsely testified in hundreds of criminal trials that hair samples taken from crime scenes matched hair folicles taken from defendants. In every one of these cases, the FBI was lying, exaggerating or overstating the strength of the alleged hair match. In many cases, the alleged hair matches were the only or the primary evidence linking defendants to a crime. Untold dozens if not hundreds of innocent people have been convicted on the basis of the FBI’s false testimony.

Apr 14

Totalitarians Everywhere May Soon Be Panicking: One in Five Millennials Describe Themselves as Libertarian

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Generation after generation of Americans have imposed ever-more burdensome impositions on their neighbors (and themselves). The young people of today live in a virtual prison of rules, regulations and controls. Adolescents are ARRESTED (along with their parents) for merely walking independently in their communities. The control freaks in charge of modern America now surveil and monitor almost all electronic communications. 21st-century America is a land of random police checkpoints, drug-sniffing dogs and SWAT raids.

These policies were imposed by OLD PEOPLE, people from different times. The young people of today seem increasingly to yearn for freedom and independence. Here is a report that polls show 20 percent of all “millennials” describe themselves as “libertarian.” Let’s hope socialists and government trusters are in for a grim future.

Apr 13

When MSN Claims Research Was “Silenced,” This Merely Means That Government Funding Was Cut

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Today’s headline on MSN News reads: “Gun owners face much higher murder risks, researchers said. Then the NRA silenced them.”

Wow. The National Rifle Association “silenced” research. But the article’s details show no support for such a headline.

The story is about governmnt funded “disease research” during the 1990s that pronounced such things as that homes with guns are more likely to experience homicides and suicides by those guns, and that guns in the homes are more likely to kill household residents than to kill home-invasion robbers. Of course, this alleged research was widely discredited. Households without guns tend to be different from households with guns. Retirees in low-crime gated communities, for example, are probably less likely to have guns in their homes. Younger people living in more dangerous or volatile circumstances may be more likely to have guns in their homes. The CDC’s alleged research compared apples to oranges.

And just think about how rare home-invasion robberies really are. Guns in homes almost certainly prevent many such robberies before they are EVER CONTEMPLATED. It is very difficult to measure such phenomena.

And why were the taxpayers of the 1990s made to pay for such anti-gun propaganda (masquerading as research) in the first place? And why on earth did the Centers for Disease Control think its mission included paying for such anti-gun “research”? How does that relate to controlling disease?

The American people–acting through gun-rights organizations and otherwise–demanded that Congress take action to shut off government funds for such propaganda purposes.

In fact, government funding of research rarely accomplishes much of anything except demands for ever-more government. A case can be made that ALL GOVERNMENT FUNDING of research should be stripped and ended immediately. Read this book by Terrence Kealy.

If cutting government funding is “silencing” research, then the government is silencing almost all research that disagrees with its catastrophic climate-change arguments. See here, here, and here.

Apr 13

At Least Two Socialist Regimes Have Sought To Kill All People Wearing Glasses

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by Dr. Roger I. Roots

I previously knew of only one communist regime in world history that had sought to execute all people wearing glasses: the government of communist-era Cambodia. However, I recently read an account by Theodore Dalrymple about his past adventures in Equatorial Guinea.

Dalrymple writes that:

I was thrilled to be told in Equatorial Guinea that if anybody in authority there knew that I was a writer (of sorts) I would be killed, cut up and thrown into the sea: . . . . The first president was known by the title of The Only Miracle, and certainly he had produced startling changes in the country: a third of the population had either been killed or had fled. Among other achievements, he managed to abolish the wearing of glasses, if not the reasons for doing so. He associated glasses with being an intellectual, and intellectuals with danger, having been a failed intellectual himself. The errors in his logic may explain why he failed as one.

The reason that socialists invariably seek to kill or control those with glasses is that they tend to identify glasses-wearing people with literacy, and literacy is viewed as a privilege of an aristocracy. Killing the literate is a type of redistribution of wealth.

Apr 13

State of New York Launches Job Creation Program, Spends Almost $700,000 Per Job “Created”

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In the dreams of socialists everywhere, they wield the wand of government power and their goals are met magically. Consider the constant attempts of government supremacists to launch “job creation” programs by diverting money taken by force from taxpayers into various schemes and agencies.

In New York, the governor launched a “Startup NY” program, providing tax breaks and other incentives to get businesses to partner with the State university system.

The state has spent $697, 368 per job so far.

Apr 12

WORLD AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT CONTINUES TO RISE, EMBARASSING “GLOBAL WARMING” ALARMISTS

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For decades, alarmists have predicted a future of mass starvation, hunger, and disease due to scarcity of commodities, energy and food. In the early 1970s, a professor named Paul Ehrlich authored a bestselling book entitled “The Population Bomb,” forecasting such dire predictions due to increases in global population. More recently, government officials and professors have claimed that manmade global warming—driven by increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—will lead to large-scale crop failures and mass starvation.
But worldwide agricultural output continues to rise faster than population growth. Today’s humans are surrounded by food abundance in ways that the humans of yesteryear were not. There have been 50 years of growth in world outputs of most food grains, according to the USDA.

How can this be? Some research suggests that increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air is helping spur plant growth rather than harming plant growth. Dr. Randall Donohue, a scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian science agency, has found that elevated CO2 levels enable leaf photosynthesis because plants are better able to convert sunlight into sugar using less water.
Dr. Donohue notes that growing worldwide leaf cover can be detected by satellite, particularly in deserts and savannas.