Author Archives: Warren Beatty
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), better known as Otto von Bismarck, is credited with being the father of socialism, the modern-day welfare state. He said, “My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.” Continue reading
Iran has been much in the news lately, with its atomic bomb, er, energy program, its nuclear scientist short lifespan, its “Close the Strait of Hormuz” exercise, its telling the US that an aircraft carrier had better not come back into the Persian Gulf, and its test firing of a home built missile. So I thought a look at its internal politics may prove interesting. Continue reading
President Barack Hussein Obama, on January 10, 2012, made a speech to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) personnel praising their efforts. Obama said that EPA regulations are good for the economy and create jobs and that the agency “touches” the lives of every American every day. He actually said that! Obama told EPA employees, “We can make sure that we are doing right by our environment and, in fact, putting people back to work all across America.” Continue reading
President Barack H. Obama enters his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress. Obama and his advisers are beginning 2012 with a renewed sense of confidence, buoyed by a series of polls that show the … Continue reading
Ed Luce wrote in the Financial Times, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.” Remember that the unemployment rate is not how many people don’t have jobs (the U6 rate of 15.6%), but how many people don’t have jobs and are actively looking for a job (the U3 rate of 8.6%). Luce continued, “Last month, unemployment fell from 9 percent to 8.6 percent… more than half of the fall was accounted for by a decrease in the numbers ‘actively seeking’ work. The 315,000 who dropped out of the labour market far exceeded the 120,000 new jobs.” Continue reading
The US House of Representatives passed on Tuesday (December 13, 2011) a bill that had in it a key Social Security tax component that Obama favors: it would keep 160 million workers from seeing their payroll tax go up on January 1, 2012, from this year’s 4.2% back to 6.2%. The bill ignores Democrat proposals to place a surtax on people earning more than $1 million annually to offset the payroll tax non-increase. BTW, because the bill also has a clause in it about the Keystone XL pipeline, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, “It was dead before it got to the Senate. The Senate will not pass it.” Continue reading



