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This letter appeared in one of our local papers. Reading it shows that this guy understands the perverse incentives government subsidies provide.Subsides only mask the true cost of everything. They do not make products or services cost less. Grants from government and states with the intent to reduce costs only increase them. Handouts to education from government have never been greater while the cost of education has never been higher. The more government interferes in private markets to distort or control price, the faster prices rise and the poorer quality becomes.This is one of the first things that any economics class should teach.
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As a follow up, here's another bit on economics and specifically how an MIT grad student demolished Thomas Piketty's theory on income inequality.[Matthew] Rognlie’s blockbuster rebuttal to Piketty is that “recent trends in both capital wealth and income are driven almost entirely by housing.” Software, robots, and other modern investments all depreciate in price as fast as the iPod. Technology doesn’t hold value like it used to, so it’s misleading to believe that investments in capital now will give rich folks a long-term advantage.Rognlie goes on explain how one way to remedy the situation is that “policy-makers should deal with the planning regulations and NIMBYism that inhibit housebuilding and which allow homeowners to capture super-normal returns on their investments.”
Read The Whole Thing.
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If Obama thought his betrayal of Israel would go unnoticed, he was wrong.It is also sending a signal to the rest of our allies, what there is left of them, that the Obama administration will have no qualms about betraying or abandoning them should it fit Obama's narrative.
Assuming Obama leaves office in January 2017 (I wouldn't put it past him to create a crisis that will somehow keep him in office), his successor will have to spend their entire time in office repairing the damage this narcissistic ass has done to our country. Obama was right when he said he was going to fundamentally transform America – he's been turning it into a pariah.
Bob Belvedere adds his two-cents worth to the subject as well, asking “Has the Despot, known as ‘Barack Hussein Obama’, damaged the reputation of America beyond repair?”
Unfortunately I have to agree with his answer: “Yes.”
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I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds' title on this one: How to read Pravda.Writes Stacy McCain:
Whenever I see the liberal media jumping to a particular conclusion, my instinct is that the opposite must be true. Whenever I see the liberal media ignoring a story, I figure that story must be very important. Is it possible that the liberal media sometimes might be correct about one of these ‘social justice’ narratives? Hypothetically, I suppose, but you’re seldom going to lose money betting against them.I've been seeing this writ small here in New Hampshire where the local paper in the state capitol is often referred to as “Pravda on the Merrimack”. Quite often they get the narrative wrong but are loath to admit they have done so, and worse, were wrong on purpose because the paper is all in to push both the SJW and Progressive narratives and the hell with the truth.
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Harry Reid has announced he will not run for re-election in 2016.So ends the tenure of one of Washington’s most petty, mercurial, and frustratingly (for Republicans) successful figures.He's also damaged the Democrat party with that pettiness and his condescending attitude towards anyone he disagreed with. Even members of his own party could be targets of his spite. And while a self-professed “faithful steward of the 'War on Women'...he wasn't exactly a feminist warrior.”
He will not be missed.
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This proves to me that those corporations taking actions to prove they're green really don't understand math.It appears Six Flags Great Adventures in New Jersey plans to cut down more 18,000 trees in order to build a 21.9 megawatt solar farm.
How much CO2 will no longer be absorbed by those 18,000 trees that are no longer there? How much tax money is Six Flags receiving to subsidize that solar farm? Doesn't Six Flags realize just how hypocritical (and stupid) this move appears to be?
Is it really just a PR stunt to help Six Flags gain some 'green' cred? I'd say the probability is quite high.
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Also by way of Cap'n Teach we find yet another reason why zero-tolerance policies in schools should be banned, in this case an 11-year old boy was suspended for a year because a single leaf of marijuana was found in his backpack.What's worse is that it turns out that leaf wasn't marijuana, but the school still maintained the suspension because they also prohibit imitation drugs. It is suspected the leaf was planted as a prank, but the school demanded the child undergo a substance abuse evaluation.
As I've said again and again ad nauseum, zero tolerance policies tend to hurt the innocent far more often than they prevent criminal acts by miscreants. They are merely a crutch for the lazy administrators who don't want to make a judgment call. I also have to lay a lot of blame on the tort lawyers, too, as they helped create this situation.
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Will Nevada make the same mistake as Seattle and San Francisco and raise their minimum wage to the point that it prices unskilled labor out of the market?One thing the minimum wage boost proponents never tell you is just how many jobs will disappear when the wage is raised, particularly if it is raised to ridiculous levels. Seattle is finding out the hard way, as is San Francisco. All it will do is drive up teen unemployment, and particularly minority teen unemployment. How are these kids supposed to learn the needed job skills if they're priced out of the market right from the get go?
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Seeing the state of freedom of speech on college campuses, I have to agree with F.I.R.E. co-founder Alan Charles Kors on this one.Kors, the University of Pennsylvania historian....has long argued that colleges systematically engage in false advertising. That is, they tell parents and prospective students that they offer wide-open educational experiences while in fact harshly limiting and circumscribing all sorts of expression and inquiry.Today, colleges and universities are some of the most close-minded and authoritarian institutions in this country. They do not believe in actual freedom of speech. Rather, they believe you have the right to agree with the Progressive agenda and if you don't then you must be silenced because [insert Leftist and SJW cause du jour here].
What's worse is that some parents are paying through the nose to send their children to these institutions, or worse, these college students are indebting themselves for the next 20 to 30 years to pay for their overpriced and inadequate education.